


Queen of Winters

by dark_roast



Series: King of Monsters [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 01:23:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 39,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5520215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dark_roast/pseuds/dark_roast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sequel to Crown of Shadows, and the conclusion of the King of Monsters trilogy.</p><p>Sigyn has left her home and her family in Hjallsmuli to join Loki in Jotunheim. At first, her happiness with Loki seemed assured, but as the day of her wedding draws near, Loki grows more and more aloof. Despite his extravagant gifts and his cool assurances, Sigyn begins to fear that Loki regrets his decision to marry her. That turns out to be the least of her worries.</p><p>When Kolfjollmarr Kolfgnarsson arrives at the palace to challenge Loki's right to rule Jotunheim, Loki tells Sigyn that Kolfjollmarr isn't the first to challenge him -- nor will Kolfjollmarr's challenge be the last. But, Kolfjollmarr's challenge brings consequences not even Loki can predict. Sigyn, no warrior by the furthest stretch of imagination, is forced into a fight for Loki, for her new home, and for her right to rule Jotunheim as its queen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The last block of stone crumbled and fell. Sigyn stepped back, nearly colliding with Loki, who had glided up behind her, without her noticing. Loki's hand touched the small of her back to steady her, alighting there like a skittish bird and leaping away again, almost immediately.

"A shame we needed to destroy the wall," Thistilbardi said in his rough, cracked voice.

"Yes," Loki said. "A cunning piece of stonework. I did not even know this chamber existed."

Sigyn wished Thistilbardi had never broached the topic of the Queen's Chambers. The old ettin meant well, she knew. But Thistilbardi had given Loki yet another excuse to keep her at arm's length.

Thistilbardi turned to Sigyn, extending his hand. "My lady. The first glimpse of the Queen's Chambers should be yours."

"I am not your queen," Sigyn demurred.

"A technicality, merely," said Thistilbardi. "You are the king's consort."

"Sigyn," Loki said, "I will not have you sleeping in a guest room."

She flashed him a look over her shoulder. _I should be sleeping in your chambers,_ she thought. _In your bed. With you._

A mask of cool boredom fell over Loki's face. The expression was very familiar to Sigyn, from the days after he had broken their betrothal. Each time she saw that look, it drove a hot needle of fury and fear deep into her heart.

At first, she had been so happy. She had left Hjallsmuli, and her father's house, and come to Jotunheim, with her heart glad to never look back. Loki had seemed happy also. They had survived. They had won. They cleaved to one another as if nothing could ever separate them again. That was how it was supposed to be. After everything they had suffered, happiness was what they were owed.

But, as the weeks passed, Loki grew distant. His smiles turned brittle and sarcastic. Jotunheim had turned colder and stormier, reflecting his disquiet. Sigyn knew not where she had taken her misstep. What she had done wrong. Perhaps she had done nothing. That was what she truly feared.

"His Majesty wishes the Queen's Chambers to be yours, my lady," Thistilbardi said. "You will wed Jotunheim's king in less than a week, and you will be our queen in every sense, save the most strictly traditional." The creases in the ettin's face deepened as he smiled down at her. "Jotunheim has too long been bound by traditions. I shall be pleased to call you my queen. Come, my lady."

Sigyn could not refuse him a second time without being rude. She laid her hand in the ettin's large, gnarled palm, and allowed him to escort her to the door of the Queen's Chambers.

The ettin were an ancient people, nearly as ancient as the Asgardians. Over many thousands of years, ettin language had become as subtle and intricate as the Asgardian High Tongue. In the ettin language, King and Queen also meant Warrior and Preserver. Equal and opposite. Neutral of gender, until they were applied to a specific person, and then subtle shifts of inflection transformed them.

The alfin were more extravagant, calling the two partners in any marriage, royal or common, the Wielder of Winter and the Keeper of Fire. They had a long and elaborate ceremony of marriage, lasting several hours, with numerous rituals. The ettin had no ceremony at all. Two individuals agreed they wished to be wedded, and that was all ettin law required.

Jotunheim's king was alfin, however. His wedding would be alfin. Sigyn had expected to hear discontented mutterings from the ettin, but none of the ettin had ever seen a wedding, much less a royal one. Excitement buzzed in the chambers and corridors of Koninghöll, spilling into to the capital city of Utgard that surrounded the palace, and increasing as the wedding date drew nearer. In Utgard, Sigyn had seen houses bedecked by intricate, beautiful garlands of ice, and walls hung with cleverly woven tapestries of water-weed, depicting her standing by Loki's side. However, Sigyn could never truly be Jotunheim's queen. Only consort to its king. Jotun tradition decreed that anyone who would rule Jotunheim must bind themselves to the Casket of Ancient Winters, as Loki had done. Sigyn could not so much as lay a fingertip upon the Casket. It would kill her.

Hroth, the ettin who had lifted away the last of the stone blocks, bowed to Sigyn, hand over his heart, and shoved open the dark stone doors. They swung inward with a low and gravelly creak. Dust-laden, freezing air billowed out to greet Sigyn, and she felt herself overwhelmed with sadness and longing, as if the emotions had been trapped in the chamber with the stale air. Sigyn knew from her studies of magic that such things were possible.

Beyond the reach of the torches flickering in the hallway, the Queen's Chambers was a black abyss.

"How charming," Sigyn said.

Immediately, she was sorry for saying it. Shame coiled in the back of her throat. She was never so sarcastic, never so ungrateful. Loki just seemed to bring out the worst in her lately.

"The rooms have been sealed for many years," Thistilbardi explained to her with a courtesy that made her cheeks burn. "In King Laufey's time, they were beautiful."

"You meant King Kolfinn, Thistilbardi, surely." Loki was at her shoulder suddenly, the sleeve of his coat gliding across her arm as he stepped past her into the darkness.

"No, majesty. I meant your father, King Laufey."

Loki turned back to frown at Thistilbardi, seemed about to speak, then did not.

Thistilbardi added, "In King Kolfinn's time, the Queen's Chambers were very fine. In King Laufey's time, they were a wonder to behold."

Loki raised his eyebrows. "Then, let us see this wonder, by all means."

He flung out his hand and cast a ball of green and gold fire into the room. It expanded, spun toward the high ceiling and hung there, illuminating the Queen's Chambers.

In the light of Loki's fire, the walls gleamed pale green. A carpeting of deep white fur covered the floor the pelts sewn together so cleverly that Sigyn could see no seams between them, as she stepped into the room, her feet sinking into the fur. The windows were gigantic, the largest by far she had seen inside the palace, but they were walled up with stones. A long, low couch made of bleached bone, carved in sensuous curves sat against one wall. It was bare of cushions, and it was the only item of furniture in the room.

"Does it please you?" There was an odd note in Loki's voice. Hopeful, as if he did wish her to say yes, but resigned, as if he knew better.

The room did not please Sigyn. Not in the slightest. No more than Loki's gifts of furs and gems and gowns and books had pleased her. Nor the dainty, pearl-embroidered slippers from Nidavellir, of diaphanous silks from Alfheim that she would never wear because she was always cold. Nor the vases of white daylilies -- An odd choice on Loki's part, since daylilies weren't native to Asgard or Vanaheim. All the same, Sigyn could not help but be reluctantly impressed by flowers blooming in defiance of the icy clime.

"It is very beautiful," she said. A beautiful, icy tomb, that had been locked up for centuries. "King Laufey's queen had elegant taste."

Thistilbardi said, "Ah, no, my lady. Laufey never took a queen." Thistilbardi walked into the room, slow and stooped. Near Sigyn, he paused, leaning on his gnarled stick. "Laufey had a royal consort."

"Like me," Sigyn said.

Thistilbardi nodded. "Isefrid came from an old and noble family. Laufey wished to make her his queen, but the Casket did not deem her worthy."

"The Casket killed her?" Loki said sharply.

Thistilbardi sighed. "Unfortunately so."

"Is this… common?" Sigyn asked.

"No, my lady. Isefrid's death was the first death of a royal consort in a long while."

"And afterward, the Queen's Chambers were sealed up."

"Yes, my lady."

Sigyn met Loki's eyes, and before he could say anything, she turned away, striding across the room to the second set of doors that led to the inner chamber. The fireball that Loki had cast, trailed after her, flinging her fluttering shadow up the walls.

She pushed the doors open. Unlike the outer doors, these swung noiselessly apart on their hinges. The fireball hovered behind her; she felt its warmth on her shoulders.

The queen's bed chamber also had a domed ceiling, like the inside of a gigantic seashell. The room smelled closed up, musty. Unfriendly. Two large windows here were walled up as well, and the room was empty. Sigyn's breath furled out in a pale ghost, disappearing into the dead air.

***

Loki commanded the Queen's Chambers be furnished, and Sigyn's belongings moved into them. His commands were obeyed immediately, and without question.

Though the King's Chambers were just down the hall from the Queen's, Sigyn felt no closer to Loki. The Queen's Chambers were much warmer now, it was true. Torches burned in the silver sconces on the walls. The stones had been taken down from the huge windows. Yet, though the Queen's Chambers held a bed piled with furs, and cushions covered the pallid bone couch; though her harp leaned against the leg of a table like a faithful hound, these rooms did not belong to her, and never would.

Even furnished, the rooms seemed empty. Unhappiness lay over them like a shroud. The vast bedroom felt haunted by the shade of Laufey's doomed consort. From her studies of magic, Sigyn knew that true ghosts, actual walking spirits -- were very rare. What she felt in the huge, icy gray bedroom was more likely only a memory of Isefrid, or perhaps even a memory of a memory. Laufey's memories, Laufey's grief.

The two windows in the outer chamber looked out over a vista of snow-swept plains, with a dark line of craggy mountains far in the distance, under a troubled night sky. The Vastlands. Home of the alfin. Loki's people. Directly beneath the windows lay a deep and narrow crack in the stone, lined with jagged spikes of stone.

The alfin gown Sigyn was to wear for her wedding had been carefully arranged on a sort of bone mannequin that its designer probably hadn't deemed unsettling in the slightest. It stood between the windows and the table.

Red was traditional for a Preserver, a Keeper of Fire, and red the gown was. Sigyn hadn't liked the idea at first. She never wore red. It was not a color that agreed with her. But when Yutta brought her the gown, Sigyn changed her mind. The gown was not the glaring, fresh-wound hue she'd expected. Instead, it was many colors. The dark of crushed berries to the golden-orange of sunset, ever-shifting as she moved, and all overlaid with gold lace delicate as breath. In the gown, Sigyn looked like living fire. Like someone far bolder and more brilliant than herself.

To wear with the gown, there were boots of tawny leather, embroidered in red and gold, lined in black fur.

What would Loki have been, Sigyn wondered, if the Allfather had not heard him crying, and carried him back to Asgard? Would he have perished in the cold? Would the alfin have stolen him away? Would the son of Laufey still have been a prince, still the weapon of his father's destruction? Sigyn thought perhaps yes, the Norns had chosen Loki's fate for him from the very beginning.

Loki would argue with her, of course. If he were still willing to have a conversation with her.

Sigyn picked up one of her wedding boots, and hurled it at the wall between her chamber and Loki's. The boot hit the wall with a thwack, then dropped soundlessly into the thick carpet.

Not satisfying in the least. She felt rather childish, as a matter of fact.

She crossed the room, and bent down to pick up the boot. A thread of moving air caressed her cheek, stirring her curls. It was warm, not cold. Holding out her hand to locate the breeze, Sigyn followed the current of air to the wall. Behind the table and chairs, a seam between two stones revealed itself as not a seam at all, but a deep and very straight crack, which ran up the wall and intersected another suspiciously straight crack. A door. A _secret_ door.

Could it connect the Queen's Chambers to the King's? Only one way to find out.

She dragged one of the chairs out of the way, and set the boot on its brocaded cushion. The table proved more challenging. It was stone, thick-legged and ponderously heavy. The fur carpeting made the table even more difficult to move. But, after several minutes alternately pulling and pushing, she at last maneuvered the table away from the secret door.

As she leaned her hip against the table, sweat prickling along her hairline, it occurred to her she could have just summoned one of the ettin guards to lift the table out of the way. Nobody would question her. She was Loki's royal consort.

Sigyn laughed softly. She was the daughter of a minor nobleman from a backwater world. She was accustomed to doing things for herself, or else they would remain undone.

She stepped over to the door, pressed and poked at the swirling carvings until she heard a delicate click from within. The door swung open soundlessly. Trapped air billowed out, carrying the same stale, musty smell that had been aired out of the Queen's Chambers. Beyond the door stretched a narrow, dark passageway.

Sigyn cupped her hands and called fire to them. Not a large, spinning fireball like Loki had summoned. That was beyond her skill, and even if it had not been, a small light was all she required. What came to her hands, however, was not the golden glow of candlelight, but the sullen, ruby flame of the companion fire she'd been learning to call and control, as part of the alfin marriage ceremony. It was dokkalf magic: ancient and primal.

The dokkalfar themselves were no more. Laufey's armies had murdered them all, and left Dokkalfheim a storm-swept waste. Only their half-jotun descendents, the alfin, remained. Sigyn did not know enough of magic to say for certain whether the companion fire, with its nebulous sentience, had gone mad somehow, with no pureblooded dokkalf to wield it. Every time she called it, she felt it resist her. It wasn't just her inexperience. She felt its sluggish, resentful hatred.

With a shudder and a flick of her hands, Sigyn banished the companion fire. She had mastered it well enough over the weeks she'd spent working with it. She could call it at will, and hold it contained. No longer did it roar out of control, moments after she'd finally coaxed it to appear. No longer did Loki need to close his hands over Sigyn's, and bring the fire to heel. It was like a horse that tolerated a bridle and a spur only because it chose to.

The passageway wasn't very long, and the light from the Queen's Chambers was enough to show her the dim shape of a door at the far end. Sigyn stepped into the passage. As her shadow eclipsed the light, she groped her way carefully forward. The floor was smoothly graded stone. The passage was very warm, much warmer than the Queen's Chambers, and behind the walls, she heard water rushing far away, as if the sound were echoing up to her from a subterranean river.

A long strand of cobweb floated across her face, and as she wiped it away, something small and many-legged scurried across her hand. Biting her lip, she flapped her hand to shake loose the whatever-it-was. She considered turning back. If she wanted to see Loki, he was a short walk down a well-lit hallway.

But it wasn't long before her outstretched hands met the door at the far end. Trailing her hands over the door's face, she found a large handle, made for ettin hands. It took both of her hands to drag the door handle down. It resisted. She was certain it would not turn at all, and then she heard a grating, rusty squeal, and a click, and the handle turned.

The door opened into the outermost of Loki's chambers. Loki stood just outside the door, hands upraised, and green-gold light sparking along his fingers. Sigyn leapt back, gasping in surprise, her heart lurching against her ribs. The intensely focused anger on his face was terrifying -- but an instant later, his eyes widened, and he stepped quickly away from her as well.

He dropped his hands, a scowl darkening his expression once more. "What in the name of Gullinkambi do you think you are doing? I might have killed you!"

Sigyn stepped out of the passageway, noting the book that had tumbled to the floor next to the couch. She'd meant to take him by surprise; she'd assumed he would be annoyed, but this was far past annoyance.

"Who were you expecting?" she said.

"I was not _expecting_ any one," Loki snapped back. "That is my point."

He stepped past her, and looked into the dark passageway, toward where the light from the Queen's Chambers shone through the door Sigyn had left standing open at the far end. His room was warm; it smelled of leather and paper and spicy-sweet tea: smells she remembered from his workroom in the Allfather's palace.

"Well," she said, as she began to brush off her short alfin jacket and her skirts. "Good evening."

"You've a cobweb in your hair," he replied, sounding exasperated. He stretched out his hand, his fingers flicked over her hair and withdrew, holding a long, filmy white strand.

Sigyn's hair had grown past her shoulders by the time she'd left Hjallsmuli, but within weeks of her arrival in Jotunheim, she'd let Brisenndyr persuade her to cut it again. It had been past her waist, in days gone by. It had been at least an hour's work to comb it and braid it and pin it up. And it had been heavy, like a coil of ship's mooring cable affixed to her head. Now it was short enough to leave the nape of her neck bare. Loki had not commented on it, and at this point, Sigyn was slightly afraid to ask him what he thought.

Loki added, "And you're covered in dust."

"That's to be expected in a secret tunnel, I suppose."

He swept a hand down her back. Too brusque for a caress, but even through her woolen jacket, his touch sent a delicious shiver through her. When he pulled his hand away, and held it up to show her, it was gray with filth.

"Why didn't you..."

He broke off as she turned around quickly, almost into his arms. He'd been standing so unwisely close behind her, she was surprised he hadn't anticipated that. He didn't move away, however, and neither did she. Sigyn was near enough to smell him. Clean skin and the faint, snuffed-candle scent of his magic. He'd discarded his gray, fur-collared coat; it lay over one arm of the couch. Underneath, he wore only a black tunic. The neckline of the garment left his throat and part of his chest bare, revealing one of the ridged patterns on his skin. She reached up and traced her fingers along it. His skin felt cool to her touch, but his pulse jumped.

"We discussed this," he said.

"It wasn't a discussion. It was an argument."

That was when Loki took a step back. "I promised to marry you. I won't break my word. Not again. If you are so determined to see this through, Sigyn, you ought to know the monster you intend to wed."

"Loki, I've no wish to cause you pain," Sigyn said, trying her best not to sound as irritated as she felt. "What is it that you want from me? Tell me, please."

He turned away from her, and walked toward his cluttered desk, pausing to trail his fingers across the carved edge. "It's not as simple as that."

"Yes, it is. It's exactly that simple."

With his back turned to her, he spoke again, and now his voice had a brittle edge. "I never told you why I broke our first betrothal."

Sigyn pressed her lips together. Loki had told her only that he had made a mistake, that he had changed his mind, and that was the excuse he repeated to her, with slight variations, when she asked him again. And again. Until at last her pride held her silent.

She'd been furious with him, mostly because he hadn't even bothered with a convincing lie. She knew he loved her. Sometimes against his will, but he loved her all the same. She'd never doubted that.

Loki said, "I concocted a potion for you. Blood magic. My blood, I mean. A few odds and ends from my workshop, and one ingredient forbidden in Asgard. I found it in Niflheim, after quite a bit of money had changed hands. I designed the potion to strip an enchantment from both the one who cast it, and its victim." Loki faced her, his face coldly composed, his posture deceptively relaxed. "For a mere cantrip, the pain of being torn free would be no more than a pinprick. For a powerful spell, it would be agony. I considered the pain worthwhile, because it would not only release me, but expose you as a liar, and a fortune-hunting whore. And, of course, it would hurt you. That pleased me particularly."

Sigyn's innards grew cold and tight, as if a ball of freezing metal were expanding inside of her. She said, slowly and very carefully, "But, you changed your mind."

"Not in the slightest," Loki said. "I gave the potion to you in a glass of mead. We both had to drink it, so I pretended I had picked up your glass by mistake. The potion was supposed to work within the hour. Two at most. I waited..." He lifted his hand, and let it fall again.

In spite of herself, Sigyn was curious. "What went wrong?"

"Nothing. It worked perfectly. Except there was no spell for it to counteract."

She frowned. "What sort of spell did you think I'd worked upon you?"

"Is it not obvious, Sigyn? A love spell, of course."

"But… that makes no sense. Why would I enchant you, when I could just as easily enchant Thor, and become queen of Asgard?

He laughed. "Or, become one more among Thor's many lovers. One was as good as another; there would be no guarantee he would wed you. But if I noticed you, if I found you worthy, Thor would realize your value. Given the choice between the two sons of Odin, you would choose Thor. I loved you, so of course I would understand your decision."

The scenario he'd envisioned was horrible in its calculated cruelty, yet it made perfect sense, and she ached for him. "Were there others who tried to win Thor by gaining your favor?"

A brief flash of surprise crossed Loki's face. "None clever enough to work an enchantment upon me. I couldn't figure out how you'd done it without my knowing. But, how else could I explain what I felt? It was… the type of love that didn't exist beyond wishful thinking. Every insipid verse of every love poem ever written -- it could not be. It wasn't possible." He frowned, and appeared to catch himself, then he said quietly, "The way you looked at me… you never looked at Thor that way."

"What was your plan?" she asked. "If you revealed me as false, you would cast me off, and if I proved true, you would… what?" She flicked one hand. "Cast me off?"

"I never planned beyond you proving false. I could never tell you," he added. "Never. If I had married you..." He shrugged.

She stepped closer to him, and reached out to touch his arm, but with a brusque shake of his head, he pushed himself away from his desk, and strode across the room, away from her. She watched him, the slender line of his back, the width of his shoulders under his tunic, the glossy, black hair he'd let grow long, tumbling in unruly waves past his shoulders. He was worth it. Worth all the verbal daggers he flung at her, worth all the dark deeds he'd confessed to her, and all those he hadn't yet. She saw what he'd built of his realm, of his people, of himself, saw everything about him that he somehow could not, _would not_ see -- and she was so proud of him, so fiercely proud.

_ Mine,  _ she thought. _You are mine, King Loki Laufeyson of Jotunheim. And I am yours._

She crossed the room to the long stone desk on the far side, that he had just abandoned. It was covered in books and papers. Loki's teacup, half full of tea, steamed across the room, balanced on the arm of the couch. Another cup from the same set was on the shelf above the stone table, nearly buried under a snowdrift of papers. Sigyn plucked it from the shelf. The cup was empty, a ghost of old tea staining the bottom.

The teapot sat on the corner of Loki's desk, a cunning little stoneware thing shaped like a coiled octopus. She picked it up, and poured herself a cup of tea.

"Let me..." Loki lifted one hand, then let it fall. "... I'll send Yutta to fetch a clean cup."

Sigyn shook head. "This one will do." She sipped the sweet brew she knew was not really tea, but steeped lichens. "You were the only one who took me seriously. You spoke to me as an equal, as a person with intelligence, and opinions worth listening to." Lifting her teacup, Sigyn took another sip of tea. "You make me laugh," she said. "And you make me want to misbehave."

He raised an eyebrow.

"I do love you, Loki. I forgive you."

He shook his head, and looked away from her, down at his hands, which he clenched into fists.

"I've forgive you much worse," she pointed out gently.

"I have something to give you."

_ I don't want it, _ Sigyn thought. _No more of your gifts._

"If you are determined to hold me to my promise."

"I am," she said.

Loki stepped to the cluttered table, and picked up an object Sigyn had glanced at, but assumed was another one of his books. It was instead a large box of carved black bone. "I would like you to wear this. At the ceremony. I asked Breyrkekolf to find a metal smith who could fashion a crown for you." He tilted his head, gesturing at the small horns that curled at his temples. "Jotunar do not wear crowns, of course. I don't think Breyrkekolf entirely understood what I meant."

Loki lifted the lid of the box. Within, resting on a dark blue cushion, sat a delicate hoop of intertwining gold bands, sparkling with small rubies and topazes. It would match the wedding gown perfectly. In the front, the crown dipped into a deep curve, like the markings on Loki's forehead. At the lowest point of the curve dangled a single, teardrop-shaped ruby. Up from the twined bands swept a dainty pair of gold horns, curled so they would lie close to Sigyn's head, above her ears, just as Loki's horns did.

Sigyn traced her fingertip along the crown's graceful swoops and curves.

Loki said, "Many of the jotunar are uneasy with the idea of a foreign queen." He shrugged. "Many of them are still unsure about me. I thought, if you looked more like a jotun…"

He set the box back on the table and moved to shut the lid. Sigyn stopped him, laying her hand over his.

"It's beautiful," she told him. "Thank you, Loki. I will be honored to wear it."

***

Sigyn's father, Freyr, had distinguished himself in battle years ago, before Sigyn's birth. As a reward for his bravery, the Allfather had given Freyr the rule of Hjallsmuli, one of the worlds of Vanaheim.

On Prince Thor's name day, all the nobles of Asgard and Vanaheim gathered in the Allfather's palace to pay honor to Odin's eldest son. Lord Freyr brought his wife, and his children.

Sigyn had never beheld anything so grand and intimidating as the palace, with its soaring ceilings and shining walls. More than once, her mother's sharp fingernails had pinched Sigyn's arm when Sigyn forgot herself and stared with open wonder at the riches and beauty around her.

"You are a noble daughter of Vanaheim," said her mother, leaning close to hiss in Sigyn's ear. "Do not forget yourself."

"No, mama."

"You are pretty enough to catch the eye of Prince Thor. Do not be afraid to set your sights high."

"Yes, mama," Sigyn replied dutifully.

Neither of the princes would find her worthy of notice. She was quite certain of that. She was reasonably beautiful, but everything in Asgard was beautiful. She wore her finest gown, and she felt dowdy and provincial. A pigeon among peacocks. The women of Asgard wore gauzy gowns made of hardly anything, and walked about with their arms bared and their hair hanging down their backs. They scandalized and thrilled Sigyn, and set her mother to tsk-tsking and glaring in disapproval. In Hjallsmuli, and in most of Vanaheim, a modest maiden wore her hair bound up, and a married lady covered it entirely.

Odin the Allfather greeted her father by name, and clasped him by the arms like an old friend, though it had been many years since Freyr had traveled to Asgard. Seeing her father puff with pride made Sigyn smile. He would talk about this for years to come.

When Lord Freyr presented his family, Sigyn folded herself into a low curtsy alongside her mother. Queen Frigga bid Sigyn and her mother to rise, smiling at them. Sigyn's mother fluttered and preened.

Prince Thor, meanwhile, greeted each of her brothers, smiling and affable, though he had no doubt been welcoming nobles both great and small for hours already. He bowed to Sigyn, then winked at her as he caught her hand in his own, and kissed it.

Thor was the affable, easily-managed sort of man she already knew well from her father's company of soldiers. He would be a tolerable husband: with his bed kept warm, his belly full, and his pride unruffled, he would give her no trouble at all.

Sigyn turned, and her eyes met those of Thor's younger brother. It was a strange and startling feeling, to be conquered before she even had a chance to fight. Her stomach plunged and her cheeks flushed, and Prince Loki took her hand politely, and bowed, his attention gliding smoothly over her, and away.

Lifting the hem of her fawn-colored, brocade-encrusted court gown, Sigyn walked down the steps from the dais, unable to stop a frown from creasing her forehead. Then she did the unthinkable -- at least as far as her mother was concerned. She looked back over her shoulder. Prince Loki wasn't looking at her. He had turned to speak to his mother. But Queen Frigga smiled at her, amused. The prince followed the direction of his mother's gaze, and met Sigyn's eyes again.

Mortified, Sigyn turned away quickly, only realizing after she'd done so, how rude she had been, to turn her back on the queen of Asgard and one of the princes. Sigyn's mother glared at her, eyes white-ringed with fury, and her hand tightened on Sigyn's arm, her fingers digging in painfully.

Of course, in the middle of a crowd of Asgardian nobles, nothing was said. It was only afterward that her mother's rage was loosed and, in fairness to her mother, the discussion was reasonable, until Sigyn said, "I only looked at him, mama."

"Only!" Her mother puffed up like an angry cat. "I did not teach my daughter to stare like a brazen whore."

"Mama. We are not in Hjallsmuli. I'm sure Prince Loki thought nothing of it."

She was sure she had already disappeared into a sea of meaningless faces and names of strangers that the two princes would never see again.

She added, "You were the one who told me to set my sights high, and marry a prince."

"Prince _Thor_ ," said her mother. "You are pretty enough to catch the eye of Prince Thor."

"A prince is a prince," Sigyn said. "What is the difference?"

Her mother shook her head. "Not that one," she said, and refused to elaborate. When Sigyn pressed her on the subject, she folded her arms and turned away.

"You know your mother," said her father, with a shrug.

She did. Lady Rinka brewed dramas and tragedies at the slightest provocation.

Her father said, "If Prince Loki finds favor with you, my daughter, then Prince Loki is fortunate indeed."

"I only _looked_ at him," Sigyn said again.

The next morning, a summons came for Sigyn from the queen.

"Now, you shall see," her mother pronounced darkly

"Rinka," said her father. "Enough. Queen Frigga does our daughter a great honor."

Sigyn followed the queen's handmaiden through the palace, ashamed of her gray gown with its high neck, long sleeves, and stiff skirts.

Her clothing marked her instantly as Vanir. The Asgardians thought of the Vanir as dour, prudish, overly-cautious, disapproving of everything Asgardian. The Asgardians, of course, dismissed this as the wounded pride of the conquered, and they were not wrong, though the war between the Asgardians and the Vanir had ended many hundreds of thousands of years ago. The Vanir were a proud, ancient people with a very long memory.

Queen Frigga received her in a room of the palace that was surprisingly small. Relatively speaking. It had a broad balcony overlooking a garden. A breeze whispered through the room, gentle and cool, smelling of flowers and green, flourishing things.

Sigyn curtsied deeply, the skirts of her dove-gray gown pooling around her.

"Rise," said Queen Frigga. "Come, Sigyn Freyrsdöttir. Sit and talk with me."

Sigyn followed the queen across the room to where four chairs and a long couch were arranged in a loose semicircle around a low table. Frigga sat down in one of the cushioned chairs, lifting her hand toward the couch, and smiling that same sweetly amused smile at Sigyn.

"Please," she said. "Sit."

Sigyn sat, perching herself on the edge of a cushion that was finer than her dress. On the low table in front of her was a long-throated silver pitcher of mead, four delicate glass goblets, and plates full of little cakes and sweets. She recognized a few of them from last night's feast, but most of the delicacies were completely new to her. She chose one of the honey currant cakes.

"Do you like those?" Queen Frigga asked.

"Yes, Majesty. Very much. Thank you."

Queen Frigga waited until Sigyn had bitten into the little cake, and then she said casually, "Those are my son's particular favorite."

Sigyn swallowed through a suddenly dry throat. She didn't need to ask which of her sons the queen meant.

"Forgive me, Majesty, if I have offended --"

"You have not," Frigga cut her off gently. "You've piqued my curiosity." She lifted the pitcher of mead. "Will you tell me of Hjallsmuli?"

There was nothing in Hjallsmuli of any interest to the queen of Asgard, but as Queen Frigga poured cups of mead for them both, Sigyn described her home: the green, soaring hills with their tops wreathed in clouds, the terraced fields and the brightly-painted houses clinging to their sides. Faraway blue mountains, mirror-clear green lakes, fierce winters. Oxen with curling horns and shaggy coats. She had been away less than a week, yet speaking of Hjallsmuli made her yearn for her home.

"My father's people are farmers and herders," she said.

"Asgard must seem very different to you."

"Yes, majesty."

Queen Frigga continued to interrogate Sigyn, politely but mercilessly, about her home, and her family, and her interests; whether she spent her time with needlework or baking or tapestry-weaving, reading or singing or riding, picking flowers or raising baby bilgesnipes; and all the time with a secret smile touching just the corners of her lips, as if she expected Sigyn to broach the subject of Prince Loki.

_ I only  _ looked _at him,_ Sigyn thought in despair.

The first stirrings of panic were gathering inside of her. Then Prince Loki himself walked into the room.

The prince halted in the doorway, looking from his mother to Sigyn. He bowed stiffly to Sigyn; she rose to return the greeting, curtsied, and fervently wished the floor would crack open and swallow her.

"You have company, mother," Loki said, with an unmistakable lilt of sarcasm. "You neglected to mention that, when you sent word you wished to see me."

"Did I? Dear me, how forgetful of me." Queen Frigga gestured to the couch. "Come and sit with us, Loki."

The prince sat down on the opposite end of the couch from Sigyn, giving her a baleful look.

Like Sigyn, he was dressed less formally than the night before. Instead of his green cloak and golden armor, he wore dark green trousers, and a white tunic embroidered around the collar with blue and green, under a loose surcoat of soft green leather. His hair wasn't slicked severely back, but fell in a loose wave over his brow, and curled at the nape of his neck. It suited him better, softened the sharp angles of his face.

Whatever it was that had made her turn to look back at him the night before, she felt it again: a strange tightness under her breastbone.

He said, sounding utterly disinterested, "How do you like Asgard, Lady Sigyn?"

Sigyn was surprised he remembered her name. "It is very grand, your highness."

Prince Loki raised his eyebrows. "Yet, it is not Vanaheim."

Again, she was surprised, this time by his incisiveness. "Asgard has no equal," she replied. "But, you're correct, Prince Loki. It is not my home."

"There's more to this realm than my father's palace," he told her. "If you find nothing to please you in Asgard, then you are impossible to please."

Queen Frigga pushed a breath out through her nose: her disapproval of her son was palpable.

"I never said I found _nothing_ to please me in Asgard," Sigyn said.

"Oh? Do tell me, Lady Sigyn, What rare treasure has met your exalted Vanir standards?"

Sigyn leaned forward to pick up a honey currant cake from the plate in front of her. "These. They are delicious."

He acknowledged that with a nod, and took one of the cakes for himself.

Queen Frigga said, "Asgard has more to offer you than a plate of honey currant cakes, Lady Sigyn."

"Of that I have no doubt, majesty," Sigyn said.

"Perhaps you ought to hire a native guide," Loki suggested.

Sigyn turned back to him, widening her eyes earnestly, as if she'd missed his sarcasm. "Perhaps you can recommend one?"

Loki smiled. Sigyn had thought Thor the more handsome of Odin's sons, but Thor gave his smiles to everyone.

"Perhaps I can," Loki said.

***


	2. Chapter 2

When she and Loki had been betrothed, Sigyn had nurtured a secret hope that Odin would choose Thor to succeed him. Sigyn had never wished to be queen, of Asgard or any other realm, and Loki had never wanted to rule. He had told her as much.

Strange how the Norns twisted the threads of fate.

Sigyn sat on a throne carved for Loki, from a massive block of crystal, streaked with clouds of milky white, and veins of azure and violet. Loki's throne was set on a high platform, with alfin-sized steps leading up to it. The platform put Sigyn on the same eye level as most of the ettin, if not a little higher.

Most of the morning was unremarkable. She listened patiently to jotunar who would rather speak to their king, than the royal consort. She heard concerns from ettin who lived in Utgard and Valdurnir, the cities where the damage from the Bifrost had been the most severe. She talked to grimulf-breeders from the Vastlands, and fishermen from the Sea of Night, and jotun scientists picking apart the Chitauri tech left behind after the battle.

This morning, it was not Gauthild, the captain of Loki's palace guard, who stood at Sigyn's right side, but instead, Hroth, one of Gauthild's guards.

"Where is Gauthild?" Sigyn asked. "Is she in the council meeting with His Majesty?"

Breyrkekolf and Hroth exchanged glances. Hroth never spoke to Sigyn. Loki insisted that the stocky, scarred ettin was quite talkative, but Hroth had uttered not a single word in Sigyn's company.

Breyrkekolf said, "Your pardon, my lady, but His Majesty sent Gauthild on an errand this morning, quite early."

"Oh," said Sigyn. "Well, all right. Thank you. Hroth -- bring in the next petitioner, if you please."

Hroth bowed to her, crossed the throne room, and then hesitated in the doorway. He stepped back, admitting two other ettin, then followed them back across the room, his posture stiff and a scowl on his craggy features.

"Approach, and be heard," Sigyn said. "You are welcome here."

Their faces were alike, as were the ridges on their skin. They were likely brothers, or cousins. Ever since she'd first observed that the Brinjolf twins bore identical facial markings, she'd looked for an alfin or an ettin whose markings matched Loki's. She'd had no success. The jotunar were scattered, many were dead, and Laufey had no living kin listed in the palace records.

The taller of the two ettin said to Sigyn, "I would speak with the Asgardian."

"You may speak with me," Sigyn replied evenly.

"You are not the Asgardian I wish to speak with."

"I am not Asgardian," Sigyn replied. "I am jotun. As is your king."

Both of the ettin went tense with anger. Sigyn stared down the taller one, refusing to be the first to look away. Her position as royal consort was already precarious. She did not need to make it worse by behaving like coward in front of Loki's subjects.

The other ettin suddenly laughed, a low, gravelly rumble, and the first ettin swung his head to glare at his companion, breaking the staredown.

"Little girl," said the ettin who had laughed. "You obviously don't know who we are. I shall enlighten you." He gestured at the taller ettin. "He is Kolfjollmarr Kolfgnarson. And I am Kolvaldr Kolfgnarson."

"You are welcome, sons of Kolfgnar," Sigyn said.

Kolfjollmarr sneered at her, baring sharp teeth. "We are grandsons of King Kolfinn."

"I trust you are familiar with King Kolfinn," Kolvaldr added with an oily smirk.

"Certainly," Sigyn replied. "King Kolfinn ruled Jotunheim before King Laufey."

"And Laufey killed King Kolfinn to take his throne," Kolfjollmarr said.

"As was King Laufey's right, under jotun law," Sigyn pointed out.

Kolfjollmarr's massive hands curled into fists. Each fist was easily as big as Sigyn's head.

Kolfjollmarr said, "It was Laufey's right to meet Kolfinn in formal combat, and slay him honorably. But Laufey did not. He murdered Kolfinn. Laufey's claim to the throne was not legitimate."

From the corner of her eye, Sigyn saw Breyrkekolf move closer to her. She was no fighter. Breyrkekolf and Hroth were her only against the Kolfgnarson brothers.

"Kolfjollmarr Kolfgnarson," Sigyn said forcing her voice to be steady and calm, and to not betray the mounting fear tightening her stomach. "With respect to you and to your revered ancestor, the palace records disagree with your claim."

"The palace records were written by a liar and a murderer," Kolfjollmarr growled. "Father to another liar and murderer. Laufey's half-breed bastard is no true king, and no true jotun."

Sigyn rose to her feet.

Kolvaldr laid a hand on Kolfjollmarr's shoulder. "Brother, you speak treason."

"I speak truth," retorted Kolfjollmarr.

"Brother --"

"Loki _Odinson_ should have been left to die in the icy night as an infant."

Sigyn walked the few steps to the top of the stairs. "This is how the grandson of a king speaks, in the palace of his ancestors? This is why the other realms dismiss us as mere monsters."

Kolfjollmarr lunged for her, his huge hand splaying open. The ettin's creased and calloused palm filled Sigyn's vision like a gray meteor hurtling at her. Breyrkekolf shoved her behind him. She stumbled back, catching herself against the arm of Loki's throne

Hroth rushed at Kolfjollmarr with a roar. But Hroth was a moment too slow; Gauthild leapt into the throne room behind the Kolfgnarson brothers, and grabbed Kolfjollmarr by the back of his neck, yanking him backward. For a moment, Hroth's broad, muscular shoulders everything except a glimpse of Kolfjollmarr's startled face. Hroth swiftly seized hold of Kolvaldr by the arms.

"You will apologize to the Royal Consort," Gauthild said to Kolfjollmarr.

Kolfjollmarr struggled in her implacable grip. "I will have words with the Jotunslayer!"

"You will apologize to the Royal Consort," Gauthild repeated calmly, "or you will die where you stand, Kolfjollmarr Kolfgnarson. After you watch your brother die for your imprudence, of course."

Kolfjollmarr bared his teeth.

Unfazed, Gauthild said, "What could the sons of Kolfgnar hope to accomplish here? I knew you and your brother were moving south from Sjonafell at the very hour you set forth. My spies told me as much."

"Spies," Kolfjollmarr repeated in disgust. "You have _spies_ loyal to the Bringer of the Bifrost? Tell me --- how much did that loyalty cost the usurper?"

Gauthild smiled coldly in response. "You might be surprised at how much loyalty our king can purchase, when the coin he offers is full bellies and bright futures." She shoved Kolfjollmarr away from her, and flexed her hand. A slim blade of ice leapt gracefully from it. "Now, son of Kolfgnar. What's it to be?"

Kolfjollmarr glared from Gauthild to Hroth, and then to his brother. Finally, his burning crimson gaze pinned Sigyn. He bent his head slightly, and stiffly. "Royal Consort. I ask your pardon."

Kolvaldr spoke. "Honored Royal Consort, you must pardon my brother. Our family has suffered much since the death of King Kolfinn."

Loki came striding in through the soaring, arched doorway of the throne room. "Ah, Gauthild. You've returned from Sjonafell. Splendid."

His timing was impeccable, as always. Sigyn wasn't sure whether that was a skill he had mastered through sorcery, or if it was just a knack he possessed. Either way, making an entrance was one of his more infuriating talents. He didn't seem at all fazed by the Kolfgnarson brothers, nor by the weapons drawn, nor by the tension in the room.

But his eyes met Sigyn's. Though his expression didn't change, she knew he was concerned for her. That if Kolfjollmarr had hurt her, Loki would have slain him without a second thought. Though the look was swift, though Loki turned to face Gauthild and Kolfjollmarr, putting his back to Sigyn -- she felt her heart skip, and then it seemed to expand inside her ribcage, swelling almost to the point of pain.

Kolfjollmarr snarled at Loki. "At last. Asgardian."

"Debatable," Loki replied with a shrug. "Very few in Asgard would acknowledge me as their kinsman. But, you are Kolfjollmarr, son of Kolfgnar, son of Kolfinn, son of..." He snapped his fingers. "Gauthild, help me out."

"The lineage of the dishonored holds no place in my memory," Gauthild sniffed with disdain.

"Thistilbardi would know," Loki said.

"The ancestor you seek is Kavrijn, sire," volunteered Breyrkekolf.

"Thank you," Loki said, then turned back to the glowering Kolfgnarson brothers. "Therefore, you must be Kolvaldr Kolfgnarson."

Kolvaldr nodded in acknowledgement.

"You know why I have come, Jotunslayer," Kolfjollmarr said.

"It's not to attend my wedding, I am sure, since you weren't invited." Loki put a finger to his chin. "It must be to challenge me."

"I, Kolfjollmarr Kolfgnarson, challenge you, Loki, usurper and son of the usurper, Laufey, son of Laufinnr."

Loki folded his arms across his chest, assuming an attitude of polite boredom.

Kolfjollmarr continued stolidly, "I challenge you to lawful combat, to the death. Prove yourself worthy to rule Jotunheim... _Asgardian_."

"Very well. As the challenged, it is my right to choose the place and the time of combat."

"Your pardon," Kolvaldr said, then hesitated, as if his next words stuck in his throat like a dry bit of bread. "...Your Majesty. That law does not apply to royal combat."

"It pains me to correct you, Kolvaldr, son of Kolfgnar," Loki replied, "but the law applies to all formal combat. King Mykfastr proved his right to rule Jotunheim on the field of battle in Helheim."

"An isolated example," Kolvaldr protested. "And hardly a good one. You must wait until --"

"Enough," Kolfjollmarr cut his brother off with a slash of one hand. "It matters not to me. Choose, Jotunslayer."

Loki gestured behind him, at the arched doorway of the throne room. "The great hall of the palace," he said. "Immediately."

Sigyn gasped. She wasn't the only one startled by Loki's offhanded announcement. The Kolfgnarson brothers exchanged a look. Gauthild and Hroth were not surprised at all, however. And Breyrkekolf let out a soft huff, as if he'd expected as much.

Sigyn swept up her heavy alfin skirts in one hand, and started down the steps.

"My lady..." Breyrkekolf said from behind her.

She ignored him; she didn't need to turn around to know he was hurrying down the stairs after her.

Loki said to Kolfjollmarr, "What's the matter? I would have thought any delay would be too long a delay. But, very well. I shall consent to wait until Jotunjaldr rises in the northern sky. Though, I should warn you, the royal arena has seen better days."

"Are you so eager to die, you do not even wish to bid farewell to your female?" Kolfjollmarr asked Loki.

Loki did not glance behind him, though he doubtless knew Sigyn had nearly reached the bottom of the staircase. "Lady Sigyn is not my property."

Kolfjollmarr grunted derisively. He and his brother left the throne room, followed by Gauthild and Hroth. Gauthild paused in the doorway between the throne room and the great hall, and glanced back over her shoulder at Loki; her expression was impossible for Sigyn to read.

"Sire…" said Breyrkekolf, as he came down the steps following Sigyn.

A look from Loki stopped him. "Leave us. We will join you in the great hall."

Breyrkekolf bowed. "Yes, sire."

Sigyn waited until Breyrkekolf had walked through the archway, and then she turned to face Loki. "What are you --" she began.

He caught her by both arms, not tightly, but swift enough to startle her. "Are you all right?" He cupped the side of her face in one hand. "Did he hurt you?"

"No." Again, she felt the shivering, nearly painful blossoming sensation inside of her. "No, I am unharmed. But, Loki..."

He kissed her, brushing his lips against her temple. "Forgive me. I did not mean to endanger you."

"Loki…" When he held her like that, when he kissed her, she found it impossible to think sensibly, practically. Coherently. She put her hands against his chest, and pushed herself away from him. "Loki. What are you doing?"

Loki drew back. A shadow flickered across his face. He'd mistaken her reason for pulling away from him. He still believed -- somehow, in defiance of all logic -- that Sigyn didn't welcome his touch.

"A fight to the death?" she demanded. "Why?"

"Tradition." He gave her a cool smile. "We are a brutal people, Sigyn."

"But, you've worked so hard to ensure the other realms see the jotunar as equals. Now you fight Kolfjollmarr because of tradition?"

Loki spread his hands. "What would you have me do? Refuse?"

Sigyn sighed, and shook her head. She was not sure she could watch him kill Kolfjollmarr, yet she could not ask him not to. For a king, the line between mercy and weakness was precariously thin.

Loki added, "Either I am too Asgardian, or I am too alfin, or I am Loki, son of Laufey, and that is reason enough to challenge me. Kolfjollmarr isn't the first. I'm sure he won't be the last."

A deep chill slid through her. "How many others?"

"Does it matter?"

" _How many,_ Loki?"

"Three."

"Are they dead?"

"Certainly they are dead. How could they not be dead? You heard what Kolfjollmarr called me: Jotunslayer."

Sigyn walked a few steps away from him, toward the towering arched doorway of the throne room. Beyond it, she heard jotunar gathering in the great hall: the rumble of overlapping voices, and the thud of footfalls.

"We are not yet married," Loki said quietly. "If you change your mind, I will not blame you."

That made her smile, and she turned back. "Won't you?"

He returned her smile with one equally wry. "Ah. Well…"

"Loki," she said, "I love you."

He flicked one hand carelessly. "It would be just as easy for you to love me from Hjallsmuli."

That was true, because nothing whatsoever was easy when it concerned Loki. She said, "I shall stay here. You're much worse off without me."

His eyes widened in surprise, and then he laughed. But he didn't contradict her.

***

Cracked and toppled stones lay in front of Loki's palace. Though the jagged landscape was softened by the snowfall into gentle hillocks, here and there above the drifts of white rose shattered pillars of dark stone. They, and the Chitauri skulls hanging from them, were speckled and starred by frost. No work had been done to repair the courtyard. Perhaps it served the jotunar as a reminder that the work of healing Jotunheim was far from finished. Or, perhaps Loki had left the reminder for himself, because he had caused much of the destruction, when he opened the Bifrost into Jotunheim.

In the great hall that looked out onto the ruined courtyard, a stone pillar with steps leading up to it, held the Casket of Ancient Winters. The Casket shimmered and rippled with an ever-changing dance of blue-white light. Loki said it sang to him.

Kolfjollmarr stood waiting for Loki in the great hall.

His brother Kolvaldr stood in the shadow of a pillar. To Sigyn, Kolvaldr seemed the elder of the two, his shoulders stooped, his mouth grim and tight, as if with an old pain. Sigyn was unavoidably reminded of Thor and Loki: a darker mirror reflecting the two princes of Asgard.

Kolfjollmarr strode into the middle of the great hall to meet Loki, as Loki walked out of the throne room. Though it had only been a few minutes since Kolfjollmarr issued his challenge, Gauthild's guards had gathered in the great hall, as had the members of Loki's royal council. Thistilbardi leaned heavily on his staff of polished, amber-colored bone. Brisenndyr and her brother stood beside him. Sigyn walked over to join them.

A large circle, drawn in ice on the stone floor, marked out a field of combat. Loki strode into the circle and then, ignoring Kolfjollmarr, he turned and bowed to his council members, hand pressed to his heart.

"I apologize that this will delay in our proceedings. Unavoidable, alas."

Kolfjollmarr jabbed a finger at Loki. "None of your Asgardian sorcery. A lawful combat. I want your word."

"You have it," Loki replied calmly. "I shall use no magic that you yourself cannot use. Upon my word."

That apparently satisfied Kolfjollmarr. It also made Kolfjollmarr the greatest of fools, in Sigyn's opinion.

Kolfjollmarr turned to face the royal council. "You shall judge," he said. "Ettin and alfin alike, you shall judge your impostor king."

Thistilbardi replied, "Yes, we shall judge, Kolfjollmarr son of Kolfgnar. As we judged your grandfather."

Kolfjollmarr's frowned, his bombastic confidence faltering.

Loki said, "We need not fight, son of Kolfgnar."

Kolfjollmarr swung around. "You _will_ fight me, usurper! Or are you a coward?"

"Can you not see that too much jotun blood has already been spilled?" Loki said.

He spoke not only to Kolfjollmarr. He spoke to everyone in the room. Kolvaldr listened, face impassive, eyes glittering like banked coals.

Kolfjollmarr roared, and charged at Loki, a massive, spiked blade of ice erupting from his fist. Sigyn sucked in a horrified breath. But, Loki evaded the attack easily, leaping out of the way. Kolfjollmarr spun around. For all his great size, he was frighteningly fast. As Kolfjollmarr turned to face Loki, Loki hurled a flurry of ice shards at him. The ettin smashed most of them aside with his blade. Two found their mark, one in Kolfjollmarr's thigh, another in his side. Neither a deep wound, but thin trickles of blood ran from them. Kolfjollmarr snarled in pain as he yanked them free and flung them to the ground.

"First blood to His Majesty," Thistilbardi said.

Sigyn expected Loki to toss in a taunt or two, just to deepen the sting, but Loki said nothing. His expression was intently focused. As if, for all his offhanded arrogance before the fight, he was not certain he would win.

Sigyn asked in a quiet voice, "What are the rules of combat?"

Breyrkekolf answered, pitching his voice equally low, "His Majesty and the son of Kolfgnar must stay within the circle. If one steps outside its boundary, they have lost, and the challenge is over. The loser is offered the opportunity to kill themselves, and retain their honor. If they decline, the victor may lawfully kill them."

Loki and Kolfjollmarr circled one another, Kolfjollmarr jabbing and slashing at Loki, but unable to catch him. Wherever Loki had been poised, he was gone in the instant before Kolfjollmarr struck at him. Loki was a much better fighter than Sigyn remembered. In the days before, there had been a stiffness to his fighting style, a instant wasted on calculating each move, infinitesimal delays that added up to Thor or Sif always besting Loki in the practice ring. Not anymore. He moved with liquid strength, as graceful in a fight now, as he had ever been at taking her hand, and leading her through the complicated steps of a dance.

Breyrkekolf added, "Traditionally, combat is carried out at nightfall, in the royal arena. It begins when the moon Jotunjaldr rises in the northern sky, and ends when Jotunjaldr sinks beneath the horizon. If both combatants are still standing, the ruler is deemed unworthy of the realm, and the challenger is the victor."

"That doesn't seem fair," Sigyn said.

Breyrkekolf shrugged. "According to the books, combat is usually finished long before moonfall."

He said this as if he meant it to reassure her.

In the combat ring, Loki scored another minor hit on Kolfjollmarr. The ettin now bore several bloody gashes on his skin. Sigyn assumed Loki planned to evade Kolfjollmarr until the giant's strength flagged, and then to cut him down. Not a noble plan, but certainly a shrewd one.

Kolfjollmarr, having given up on trying to strike Loki directly, had taken to hurling missiles of ice across the combat ring. Loki had managed to deflect or dodge all of them, and the floor of the great hall was littered with splinters and chunks of ice. Kolfjollmarr lunged at Loki, flinging out both arms. A boulder of ice crashed down in the spot where Loki stood, and a spume of white exploded from the impact. Stinging flecks of ice pricked Sigyn's skin. For one awful instant, she was certain Kolfjollmarr had struck true. But, when the air cleared, Loki was unharmed, except for a gash of red across his cheek.

"Ha! The Jotunslayer bleeds!" Kolfjollmarr shouted in triumph.

Calmly, Loki wiped the blood from his cheek, leaving a long, rusty smear across his blue skin. Then he leaned back, clenching his fists, gathering power. He stamped once on the ground, throwing his arms forward, and the fragments of ice littering the floor flew into the air, crashing together and spinning into one massive sphere. The missile shot at Kolfjollmarr, who dodged it, stepping easily to one side. He roared a laugh at Loki.

The ball of ice smashed into the a pillar, rebounded off the roof, and hurtled down. Too late, Kolfjollmarr turned, and the ice ball knocked him sprawling across the floor, his head and one arm landing outside the combat ring. Loki darted across the great hall. Before the ettin could rise, Loki's ice blade was at his throat.

"Sorcery!" Kolfjollmarr snarled.

"Strategy," Loki replied. "A Midgardian sport, called billiards." He pressed his ice blade lightly into Kolfjollmarr's throat, indenting the skin without breaking it. "Yield, son of Kolfgnar. Give me your loyalty, instead of your life."

Kolfjollmarr spat at Loki; Loki didn't bother to dodge. A glob of bloody spittle landed on the front of his coat.

"Kill me," Kolfjollmarr said. "I will never swear loyalty to the bastard son of Laufey."

Loki stepped back, his ice blade withdrawing into his hand.

Gauthild and her guards rushed into the combat circle, blades drawn. Several more guards quickly surrounded Kolfjollmarr's brother, and Kolvaldr did not resist them.

Gauthild frowned at Loki. "Do you wish me to kill him for you, Majesty?"

Loki shook his head. "No. Let him go."

Gauthild's frown deepened, but she bent her head. Turning to Kolfjollmarr, she prodded him with her sword.

"Get up. Take yourself back to Sjonafell. If I or any of His Majesty's soldiers see the sons of Kolfgnar south of the Hrana, we shall kill you, and apologize to His Majesty afterward. If he notices."

Loki smiled grimly. He seemed to be about to say something, but Kolfjollmarr surged to his feet, flinging bits of ice off him. He lashed an arm at Gauthild; she parried, leaping back. Kolfjollmarr broke away from her, shoving another guardsman into Gauthild's path. Loki tensed, but Kolfjollmarr lunged away from him and Gauthild, toward the pedestal that held the Casket.

"No!" Loki exclaimed.

Kolvaldr lunged against the guards holding him. "Brother, no!"

Kolfjollmarr reached the Casket an instant before Gauthild.

He seized the Casket, lifting it in both hands. "For Jotunheim!"

Blue-white light erupted from the Casket. Gauthild spun away, throwing up a hand to shield her eyes. The light was not harsh enough to hurt Sigyn's eyes; in the brilliant, coruscating glow, she saw ice swiftly encase Kolfjollmarr's arms. The ettin snarled, struggling to free himself, but the Casket gripped him mercilessly. Ice raced up his chest and down his belly. Over the courtyard outside, the sky darkened with sudden clouds.

Loki ran toward the Casket, reaching out his hand. "Stop!" he commanded. "Release him!"

A whip of white light from the Casket hit Loki's outstretched arm. Loki hissed in surprise and pain, and staggered back.

Kolfjollmarr's growls of frustration turned to screams of pain and terror, that were suddenly silenced as ice entombed his face. His body cracked in a thousand places, and crumbled to the floor of the great hall in a shower of ice fragments and sparkling dust.

The Casket's blue-white fury flickered and subsided. A moment of terrible silence fell in the great hall. Outside, the daylight began to brighten, the clouds retreating.

Loki, holding his injured arm against his chest, said, "Gauthild. Escort our guest out of the palace."

Gauthild was quick to shake off her shock. "Yes, sire."

She gestured to her guards, and they dragged an unresisting Kolvaldr Kolfgnarson toward the colonnade, and the steps leading down to the ruined courtyard.

***

Late in the night, Jotunjaldr rose above Loki's palace. Three of Jotunheim's moons were visible from the windows of the Queen's Chambers, but Jotunjaldr gilded the snow and the stone alike with its yellow-greenish glow, as if the courtyard were an illusion Loki had cast.

Sleep seemed unlikely. Sigyn had tried to distract herself by reading, but the image of Kolfjollmarr's ice-covered, agonized face kept floating to the surface of her mind. After Gauthild's guards had escorted Kolvaldr from the palace, Loki had returned to his negotiations with the royal council. Sigyn had returned to the throne room, to hear petitions from the jotunar. Loki had stayed behind closed doors with the council until evening. Sigyn did not see him at all, until the reception in the great hall, where she had no chance to speak with him.

She stood at his side, greeting alfin chieftains from the Vastlands, and ettin nobles from Thrymheim and Utgard. Loki's subjects brought her wedding gifts of pelts, and finely-embroidered wool, and ropes of pearls, and even a pair of gigantic grimulfs that Brisenndyr looked over and pronounced very fine. Sigyn found the huge, craggy creatures terrifying, though they didn't seem interested in doing any worse to her than sniffing her hands.

Sigyn laid aside the book Loki had lent her, _Rifinglafin's Quest_ , and climbed out of the vast white bed. She slipped her feet into her boots, and wrapped a cloak of white fur around her. From her bedside, she took a little cage of carved stone that held a tightly-compacted ball of glowing blue lichen.

Loki's palace was dark and quiet. The two ettin guards stationed in the corridor between the queen's chambers and the king's, bowed to Sigyn. They didn't seem surprised to see her wandering the halls long past nightfall. She nodded to them and headed down the hallway, deeper into the palace.

As with the courtyard in front of the palace, Loki had not commanded his people to restore the palace to the splendor of King Kolfinn's rein. The cavernous labyrinth of rooms and hallways was mostly deserted. The whisper of Sigyn's booted footsteps echoed in the towering hallways. She passed deserted rooms, their doors gaping open, the light from Jotunheim's moons falling across bare stones. Memories of Jotunheim's last great age, before Laufey's failed conquest of the Nine Realms, and the loss of the Casket to Asgard.

A narrow, crumbling staircase twisted upward and, lifting the little stone lantern to light her way, Sigyn followed it. The stair risers, built for an ettin's stride, were crumbling. Sigyn picked her way easily upward over the fallen stones. Most of the second floor had eroded away with time, or been blasted into rubble by the Bifrost. A chilly thread of night air sighed hollowly down the stone throat of the staircase. The lantern threw fluttering shadows up the walls; the gust of cold air grew stronger. The staircase turned, and the ceiling ended in a jagged chunk. Above her spread the night sky, glittering with countless stars. Jotunjaldr hung directly overhead, a massive citrine nestled in a bed of indigo silk.

Across the roofless room stood long, tall stone table, and beside it, a single huge chair lay toppled, half buried in ice and snow. Perhaps the room had once been a banquet hall. A craggy jawbone of a wall at the far end of the room blocked Sigyn's view of the narrow canyon where ettin stonecutters had carved a gigantic bas-relief of Loki into the high rock wall.

A figure stood at the edge of the broken floor, back turned to her, looking out over the courtyard. She recognized Loki immediately by his bearing: head bent, hands clasped behind his back, feet braced wide. He was so still, she guessed he was deep in thought.

Stepping carefully over ice and fallen stones, she walked over to join him. Loki turned as he heard her footsteps come gritting across the ice and stone shards. In the moonlight, he looked strange, almost frightening. His cheekbones were deeply shadowed, the ridged markings on his forehead and cheeks etched darkly, the shape of his head with its horns unfamiliar, and his hair so much longer than she remembered. The moonlight behind him cast him almost entirely in silhouette; his eyes were darkly shadowed. Impenetrable.

He was, as he had so often pointed out to her, no longer the Loki she knew.

His voice, however, was the same. "It's late."

"Quite late," she agreed.

He didn't reply. The silence was not exactly companionable, but it wasn't unpleasant, either. Sigyn set her lantern on the edge of a broken-topped stalagmite of ice.

"What happened to Kolfjollmarr..." she ventured. "Is that what happened to the other three who challenged you?"

"No," Loki said harshly. "I killed the others myself. As quickly as I could. With as little pain as I could." His hands squeezed into fists. "I never thought to spare the others. I thought if I..." He sighed and shook his head. "It doesn't matter."

Sigyn laid her hand on his arm, mindful of the injury the Casket had dealt him. "Kolfjollmarr's death is not your fault. He refused you. He spat on you, Loki."

"The next one might not," he said, and Sigyn smiled, in spite of herself.

She knew what he'd say, but she had to ask. "Your arm. Are you all right?"

He gave her a look of indulgent exasperation, and pushed back the heavy sleeve of his coat, to show her the bandage wrapped around his forearm. "You see? No worse than getting a switch across the knuckles from an impatient tutor."

Sigyn pressed her lips together. Any tutor that had dared to strike her as a child, would have been tossed out a window by one of her brothers.

Loki reached out to tug the fur cloak more closely around her. "You're cold."

"It's a cold night."

"Every night in Jotunheim is a cold night."

They fell silent again, both looking out over the courtyard. Snow and silence, broken stones and the ghosts of past battles.

Loki raised his arm and pointed past the courtyard, at one of the buildings standing at its edge. It was taller than the rest, its narrow doorway gaping empty and dark, the stone glittering with frost.

"That is where I was found," he said. "As an infant."

Sigyn started in surprise.

"It's a temple to Odin and Frigga," he added. "Or it was, before Laufey's conquest. I'm not sure what I'll do with the old place. Tear it down, I suppose. Before it collapses on top of someone."

"I'd like to see it," Sigyn said.

"There's not much to see." Loki gave her a look out of the corners of his eyes. "Tell me... if the Allfather had left me to die in the cold as an infant, whom do you suppose you might be marrying instead?"

"Someone far less interesting."

He laughed softly. "Is that what I am to you? Interesting?"

"You know what you are to me, Loki."

He was silent.

"Loki…"

She wasn't sure how to approach the topic, but she wanted to take advantage of his rare willingness to converse with her.

Loki glanced down at her, hearing the rise of uncertainty in her tone.

"Do you come up here many nights?" she asked.

"Some nights," he replied, an odd, tight note in his voice. An invitation, almost. As if he were telling her that if she woke to find her husband's side of the bed empty, she might find him here.

He rubbed his arm, where the Casket had scarred it. "You ought to know, my love, that your husband-to-be does not sleep very well. I don't I deserve to, considering the things I've done."

_ And considering the things that were done to you,  _ she thought.

She remembered the moment he had told her of the Chitauri, and of Thanos. How they had tortured him, broken him open, and twisted him into their weapon. He showed her these glimpses of himself like treasures from a dragon's hoard, carefully hidden, jealously guarded. Some of them bright and fragile with hope. Some of them dark, so terribly dark. She never knew what she would see until he opened, and let her look inside.

"Sigyn, are you certain?" he said softly. "Is this what you want? Jotunheim? Me?"

She didn't answer him immediately. He drew a sharp breath in through his nose, as if her silence had stung him.

Then he said, "Well. I suppose that's only fair."

She could not let that statement hang, in the darkness and the silence between them. "If not me, who would you take for a wife?" she asked, echoing his earlier question. "Princess Brisenndyr?"

"No one," Loki replied. "I never had any wish to marry. I only offered for you, because I disliked living without you."

Sigyn crinkled her nose in wry displeasure.

"What would you have me say?" he demanded in a low, intense voice.

"That depends. Which of your marriage proposals are you referring to?"

"Both of them," he replied, frowning at her. "I am not Thor. I am not profligate with my affections. I love _you_. But, I will not have you wed me, and then grow to hate me. I could not bear it, Sigyn. Of all the things in this universe that have tried to destroy me and failed, you would succeed. You are the blade in my heart."

"I am not a _blade_ ," she protested, horrified.

Loki caught her by the arms, and drew her to him. "How can you not see it? You have slain me. If you leave me, I will bleed to death, a drop or two of my blood lost with every beat of my heart, until I am empty inside."

Sigyn felt her cheeks flush. That was the most wildly romantic thing Loki had ever said to her. Quite possibly, it was the most wildly romantic thing one individual had ever said to another, in the entire history of recorded time.

He kissed her, first on the forehead and then his mouth brushed over hers, lightly, and she blushed warm all over. She leaned into his kiss, he evaded her, and she felt the all-too-familiar rush of frustration. But, instead of stepping away, Loki turned his head, his jaw skimming along hers, the ridges on his skin brushing her cheek, the hard curve of his horn pressed her neck, as he laid his forehead on her shoulder. Startled, Sigyn lifted her arms, and embraced him.

***


	3. Chapter 3

Looking at her situation objectively, the particulars were absurd. After breaking his betrothal promise (and then dying) -- Loki had returned, telling Sigyn that her that he still loved her. Except, he was not the Allfather's younger son; he was, in reality, King of the Frost Giants, and he wished to make her his queen.

Ridiculous, really.

Sigyn emerged from the Queen's Chambers, the stiff and shimmering skirts of her wedding gown rustling around her. Yutta hurried to scoop up the trailing end of the diaphanous train. Sigyn's mother stepped into Sigyn's path, reaching up to arrange Sigyn's curls _just so_ around the horned crown on her head.

"My hair is not going too stay where you put it," Sigyn reminded her.

"Because it is too short," Lady Rinka said tartly.

"I like it short. Besides which, mama, most alfin women wear their hair short."

"What does your husband-to-be think?"

"I haven't asked him."

Her mother made a low _hmmm_ in her throat, then stepped back, frowning. "It is not _entirely_ unbecoming."

"My lady Sigyn looks beautiful," Yutta said staunchly, from behind Sigyn.

Lady Rinka's eyebrows shot up, but she looked more amused than annoyed.

"Thank you, Yutta," Sigyn said.

"You're right, child," Lady Rinka said, then turned to Sigyn. "You do look beautiful, daughter. I suppose it is only that you do not look Vanir."

"I am not Vanir," Sigyn said quietly. "Not any longer."

Her mother nodded. "Indeed, you must be jotun now. The other realms make no distinction between Vanaheim and Asgard; and Jotunheim has suffered long enough under Asgard's heel."

Surprised, Sigyn drew breath to speak, but her mother added,

"It is not Loki's ancestry I object to."

"I know," Sigyn said.

She did not want to start an argument with her mother. Not now. Fortunately, that was when Brisenndyr rounded the corner of the hallway and walked, slowly and carefully, over to join them. Instead of Brisenndyr's usual grimulf-leather armor, or her practical skirts and short wool coats, the alfin princess wore a long, sleeveless gown made of shimmery pale pinkish-gold cloth, utterly unadorned. The sleek garment suited Brisenndyr perfectly.

"You look beautiful," Sigyn said, startled.

Brisenndyr laughed. "Don't sound so surprised."

"Forgive me. I only meant…"

"Oh, I know." Brisenndyr bent her head, and smoothed a hand down her dress, almost shyly.

Sigyn had seen the princess wear alfin formal clothing at several court gatherings, as stiff, gem-encrusted, and heavily embroidered as Sigyn's wedding dress -- but never something like this.

"Is that... _Asgardian_?" Lady Rinka said, sounding almost horrified.

"It is Midgardian," Brisenndyr replied.

"Well," said Lady Rinka with a sniff, "it looks very fine."

Sigyn caught Brisenndyr's eye and gave her a sympathetic look.

The small bridal procession made its way toward the great hall of the palace, Gauthild and three of her ettin guards fell in behind Yutta. The towering doors of the great hall had been thrown open and, in the doorway

Beyond the Allfather and Queen Frigga, the great hall of the palace lay almost entirely darkness. The wedding guests gathered in the hall were a shadowy mass, yet Sigyn still felt every gaze upon her. At the far end of the hall, the shimmering light of the Casket rippled across the floor and up the nearby pillars, and Jotunjaldr held court over the snowy courtyard outside.

Brisenndyr and Gauthild stepped to each side of Sigyn, both of them carrying stone lanterns that lit Sigyn's path with a faint blue glow.

Sigyn concentrated on not treading on the long, stiff skirts of her gown. The light of the lanterns played over the fabric in flashes of flame-colored light, little sparks of beading. The stones beneath her soft leather boots were smooth and level, yet she still felt unsteady on her feet. The distance from one end of the great hall to the other had never stretched longer.

She had nearly reached the pillar where the Casket rested, when Queen Frigga emerged from the shadows into the lantern light, with the Allfather beside her.

Sigyn halted, her heart beginning to pound. Now, for the first time, this did not feel like a dream. It was truly happening. She sank into a curtsey, the full skirts of her gown spreading around her like a pool of fire.

The Allfather's gauntleted arm moved into her range of vision, his hand extended to her.

"Rise," he said gently.

Sigyn took his hand, and let him draw her to her feet. As he did so, Queen Frigga stepped forward, and kissed Sigyn on the cheek.

The Allfather pressed Sigyn's hand between his calloused palms. "Thank you, Sigyn."

"For what, sire?"

"For forgiving him."

Sigyn was about to reply that she'd never had much choice where Loki was concerned, but the careworn look on the Allfather's face stopped her tongue. Queen Frigga stepped to her husband's side, and slipped her arm through his.

Not knowing what else to say, Sigyn replied, "You're welcome, sire."

She walked past them, and up to the Casket. In front of the pedestal that held the Casket was a much smaller stand, not much more than a truncated column. On top of that sat a smoothly polished stone bowl, not much bigger than her cupped hands together. It was empty, Sigyn knew, from rehearsing the ceremony the day before.

Between one shadow and the next, Loki stepped out of the colonnade, and walked to meet her. Thor and Breyrkekolf followed him, both carrying lanterns, as Brisenndyr and Gauthild were.

Loki wore a gray-blue coat Sigyn had never seen before. Made especially for the wedding, apparently; encrusted with silver embroidery, and sparked with small blue gems set along the high collar. When their gazes met, Loki gave her a put-upon look that was very nearly a pout. Sigyn bit her lip to stop herself from smiling.

Thistilbardi had followed Thor and Breyrkekolf. The ancient ettin moved to stand at Loki's right side.

From Sigyn's left, Gauthild bowed to Loki, hand over heart. "King of the ettin, I have brought your Keeper of Fire."

Brisenndyr, on Sigyn's other side, said, "King of the alfin, I have brought your companion flame."

Loki stepped forward, and spoke his part. "I meet my companion with an open heart."

Thor glanced at Thistilbardi, raising his eyebrows. The ettin nodded.

Turning to Sigyn, Thor said, "Lady Sigyn of Vanaheim, I have brought your Wielder of Winter."

Then Breyrkekolf said, "Lady Sigyn, Royal Consort, I have brought your companion ice."

Sigyn stepped forward toward Loki. "I meet my companion with an open heart."

Loki held out his hands to Sigyn and, as she grasped hold of him, she realized her hands were icy with nervousness. His hands were warmer than hers. He smiled, a touch of ironic humor in the smile, and it made her less afraid.

Loki led her to her proper place, on the left side of the stone pedestal that held the empty bowl. He took his place on the opposite side.

The stone bowl resting on top was chipped along the rim, its fine carvings worn smooth by age. Brisenndyr's clan had brought it to the palace from their camp in the Vastlands. It was the traditional marriage bowl of Clan Brinjolf, carried to Jotunheim from Dokkalfheim, with the prisoners of conquest that Laufey had taken.

Thistilbardi moved to stand between them, between the pedestal and the Casket. He cleared his throat, smiled at Sigyn, then turned the smile to Loki.

"Loki, King of the ettin and the alfin, son of the Allfather and prince of Asgard; son of Laufey, chosen of the Casket of Ancient Winters, vanquisher of the Chitauri --"

Sigyn met Loki's eye. He gave her that small, wry smile again.

"-- and Queller of Darkness, do you take Sigyn Freyrsdöttir of Vanaheim, to be your companion and you wife?"

"Yes," Loki said. "I take Sigyn to be my companion, my wife, and my queen."

A soft noise ran through the crowd of mingled ettin and alfin, not a mutter of disgust precisely. More as if several guests had exhaled quick huffs of disapproval. Thistilbardi turned to Sigyn.

"Sigyn, daughter of Freyr, and lady of Vanaheim, do you take Loki, son of the Allfather; son of Laufey, and King of the ettin and the alfin, son of the Allfather and prince of Asgard; son of Laufey, chosen of the Casket of Ancient Winters, Vanquisher of the Chitauri and Queller of Darkness, to be your companion, your husband and your king?"

"Yes," Sigyn replied. " I take Loki to be my companion, my husband, and my king."

"In the presence of these witnesses, and giving your consent, you shall be bonded in the ancient way."

Sigyn let go of Loki's hands, and then cupped her hands over the chipped stone bowl. She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. She had called the companion fire the day before, but she had not been standing in front of the royal council, the chieftains of all the alfin clans, and Loki's family. She felt her pulse fluttering swiftly in her throat, and she could not center herself, to find the place where she had coaxed magic from the core of her.

Several long moments elapsed. She was painfully aware of everyone in the great hall watching her. Then Loki's fingers closed gently around her wrists.

She opened her mouth to whisper to him, tell him not to call the companion fire for her; she could do it. She _would_ do it. But she didn't feel the prickle and sting of his magic flowing into her. He held her wrists. Nothing more. His thumbs brushed the thin skin on the inside of her wrists.

"Easy does it," he murmured.

Sigyn closed her eyes, and pushed everything else away, except the feeling of Loki's skin on hers. Lifting her hands, she reached down inside herself, to the place where the companion fire lay banked and waiting. She called the fire, and it rushed to her, eager to be summoned again so soon. Thor grunted softly in surprise; several of the ettin gasped.

She opened her eyes. The companion fire burned deep ruby red in her cupped hands, reflected in the fabric of her dress. Loki raised his eyebrows at her. She nodded. He let go of her. Sigyn bit her lip, struggling to keep her mind centered, without concentrating too hard. Hopefully, she'd be able to hold the companion fire steady; hopefully, it wouldn't roar and streak in a column toward the high ceiling of the great hall.

Loki's part was easier. He called ice to his hand, creating a dagger. He pressed his lips together, then lowered his ice blade into her cupped hands, offering it the flames.

Sigyn felt the chill of the ice dagger, as if he'd pressed it against her palms. The heat of the companion fire twined around it. Water trickled into the stone bowl beneath her cupped hands. Loki held the ice blade until it had melted away. Sigyn banished the companion fire. It continued to burn in her palms, reluctantly, for a moment or two, and then it vanished. Loki picked up the little stone bowl in both hands, and offered it to her. They had practiced this part of the ceremony, but the bowl had been empty.

Sigyn drank a mouthful of the water inside. It was sweet and delicious, like satin on her tongue. An icy chill swept over her, twining around her. It filled every part of her down to her bones. She thought of Kolfjollmarr, of the terrible way the Casket had slain him, but, this cold didn't harm her. Already, it was ebbing away.

Hands trembling, Sigyn held the stone bowl out to Loki. He took the bowl, his fingers brushing hers, then he lifted it and drank. She saw it in the startled widening of his

Something happened to him as well, when he swallowed the water. She saw it on his face,

As he set the bowl on the pedestal, the click of stone on stone sounded loud in the quiet hall.

And it was done. They were married… or nearly so.

Had she married Loki in Asgard, there would have been feasting and drinking and dancing, until not one wedding guest one was left capable of standing unassisted. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Thor looking around the great hall, no doubt missing the applause and the cheering, the showers of flower petals, and the joyous rush to congratulate the couple.

Sigyn knew there would be dancing and feasting aplenty tomorrow. The date of the wedding had been chosen carefully, to honor alfin tradition. While Jotunjaldr ruled the sky, there would be no celebration, but after tonight, Jotunjaldr would not rise again for another month.

***

Loki closed the door behind him, and heaved a huge sigh. _"Finally."_

Sigyn laughed, then covered her mouth. Their wedding guests had escorted her and Loki from the great hall to the King's Chambers, and were probably still in the hallway outside. She glanced toward the door. It was very thick, and carved out of stone, but still...

"I thought that ordeal would never be over," Loki added unrepentantly.

"Would you be quiet, please? Is this how a king behaves?"

He scowled, yanking at the buttons on his collar. "This is how someone wearing an itchy coat behaves."

Reaching up, she nudged Loki's hands aside, and worked one of the small gemstone buttons through its buttonhole. As her fingers touched his throat, he twitched back.

"You're squirming like a fish, Loki. Just hold still."

Loki stepped away from her. "No. Wait."

"I must wait longer for you?" Sigyn said. She meant it to come out lightly, but it didn't. Not quite.

He moved toward the archway that led to his bed chamber, and then, in a gleam of green-gold light, he transformed himself into the Loki she had known in Asgard. Sigyn drew back in surprise.

Loki spread his hands. "Is this not what you want? Is it not what you have wanted all along?"

"I did not marry an illusion," she pointed out.

Loki laughed. It was unsettling to hear that low, sarcastic laugh, with its undercurrent of darkness, and to see him as he had been before he'd ever learned to laugh like that.

"Oh, my sweet love," he said. "Of course you did."

She caught him by the hand, her fingers threading through his. The illusory Loki vanished, revealing her husband.

What had he planned to do? Douse all the lights? Did he think she wouldn't feel how different he was now? His long hair, the ridges and patterns on his skin -- which, she was certain -- covered him all over, and not just the parts of him she could see. Did he think she would not touch him? Perhaps he thought she would not want to.

She led him through the archway. He followed, wordless. His hand in hers felt tense.

His bed chamber was smaller than she'd expected, or possibly it was the ridiculously enormous bed that made it look small. The bed in the Queen's Chambers was a vast snowscape of white fur and white pillows, far too large for Sigyn. It was an ettin-sized bed. Loki's bed was large enough for three ettin to sleep comfortably. It was piled with furs and cushions. Looming over it was a gigantic headboard constructed out of the interlocking horns of several different beasts, rising up in a massive, thorny wall.

Sigyn halted and stared at that incredible bed, her mouth hanging open.

Behind her, Loki laughed. This time, his laugh sounded soft and amused. "The ancestral bed of the kings of Jotunheim. Built even before Thistilbardi was born. So I'm told."

"Most impressive," Sigyn said.

He let go of her hand, then lifted the golden crown off her head. It was so light, and so well balanced, even with its delicate, curving horns, that she'd forgotten she was wearing it. The crown shimmered in the light from the bluish lichen torches burning in metal brackets along the walls. He crossed the room and set the crown carefully on a table in one corner, near the windows that looked out over the courtyard.

Stepping behind her, he grasped her gently by the shoulders and turning her to face the windows, away from him He began to unfasten the small gold buttons that held her gown closed. Even though he was going about it with a certain businesslike determination, he was still taking off her clothing.

"We have the same view," Sigyn said. Her voice emerged breathless. His hands skimmed the skin of her back, cool and efficient. "Except, you can see more of the courtyard."

"I appreciate the reminder," he replied.

His fingers continued working their way downward, until the stiffly brocaded bodice gaped open. Sigyn felt the cool air on the skin of her back. Loki's chambers were warmer than the Queen's Chambers, but she still felt the cold.

He pushed the dress forward, off her shoulders. Underneath it, she wore a pale pink silk shift, one of her own that she'd brought with her from Hjallsmuli. Though she was still mostly dressed, and though her back was turned to him; though she would not share to his bed an untouched maiden, her heart was beating swiftly now, because it was Loki.

Turning to face him, she let go of the dress. It collapsed slowly, gracefully, though not completely. The stiff brocade and the beaded bodice were standing up on their own. She stepped out of the heap of fabric, then she put her hand on Loki's shoulder for balance, as she tugged off her fur-lined boots and her stockings, and tossed those on top of the dress. Clad only in her long chemise now, she felt the cool air moving all across her body. Goose flesh rose on her skin.

Sigyn took hold of his hands again, and tugged him toward the massive, fur-covered bed. He followed her, then bent his head to kiss her. She wrapped her arms around him. The kiss turned from tentative, to a proper kiss, a deep kiss, the way he'd kissed her months ago, when he'd been convinced it was their last kiss.

His arms tightened, pressing her against his chest and the front of his coat. His itchy coat. He kissed her ardently, almost desperately, a kiss of countless little kisses, not practiced, not perfect, each kiss blessing her mouth, until a fiery heat raced up her from the crux of her legs through every part of her, tight and yearning. She felt her cheeks and her ears flush, and Loki cupped a hand around the back of her head, his fingers digging through her curls.

Sigyn clamped her arms around his neck, and held him close, precisely where she'd wanted him, nearly since the first moment she set eyes on him. His hips were wedged tight between her legs, and she could feel how badly he wanted her; the ridge of his erection pressed against her pelvic bone. He pulled back, but she refused to let go of him.

"Sigyn," he gasped. "You'll be the death of me, I swear it. I beg you -- let me take my clothing off."

She had to laugh. She let go of him, reluctantly. His clothing wasn't Asgardian, and neither was hers. His jotun garments would not disappear with a moment of focused thought.

Loki stripped off the beautiful, embroidered blue-gray coat, tossing it heedlessly onto the floor. His hands went to the top button of his black tunic, and he stopped. His gaze flicked to one of the sconces on the wall.

"No," she said. "Don't. Please. I want to see you."

He opened his mouth. He was on the verge of arguing with her, she could tell. Of explaining to her, patiently, the many reasons why he was right and she was wrong. But, he didn't speak, after all. A brief, shadowed expression crossed his face, and he undid the button. The look on his face was almost... it was resignation.

It was one thing for him to be jotun, in Jotunheim, among no one but other jotunar. It was quite another thing for him to stand here, in front of her, and be jotun.

He was so very different, but he was still beautiful. He was still Loki.

She unbuttoned his tunic, as he had unbuttoned the back of her dress for her, and then she parted the black fabric with her hands. She'd been right: the patterned ridges covered him all over. There was the curve that encircled his collarbones. A matching curve, a few inches farther down. A pair of parallel ridges marking the center of his chest, on either side of his navel. The edges of other markings along his ribcage and sides, disappearing around to his back. Her fingers wanted to follow them, and see where they led.

Sigyn traced her fingertips down the ridges at the center of his chest. His stomach muscles jumped. But, he didn't pull away from her. Instead, he pulled her close again, kissed her, then let go of her immediately, as he tore off his tunic. She fought her way out of her chemise at the same time, meeting his hands in the same places as her own, and then tugging at the buttons on his black trousers. She could not make her fingers obey her. Her hands were shaking. His hands slid down her back, to the curve of her hips, that place his hands always seemed to find, and then past that to cup her buttocks, and pull her against him.

Then he pushed her backward. She lost her balance, and toppled onto his bed. Furs flumped up around her; pillows went bouncing and tumbling into the divot she'd made, most of them falling on top of her. Loki flung pillows out of the way, then he pounced. His added weight drove her deeper into the bed, and she couldn't help laughing as one of the pillows he hadn't thrown far enough, came tumbling back like a small, eager dog. 

He cursed, and hurled it across the room. She heard it thud against something, as he kissed her lips and then her cheeks, her eyelids, her nose; she wrapped her arms and her legs around him, holding him close to her, her hands finding the places where the ridges on his skin wrapped and swirled around the muscles of his back. The contrast between her golden brown skin and his darker blue, her arm against the skin of his shoulder and neck, her leg hooked over his hip -- it was startling and thrilling:

"Now," she whispered in his ear. "Loki, now. Please."

She couldn't wait any longer for him. She'd waited so long already. She was terrified he would stop, would decide that for her own good, she should sleep in the Queen's Chambers, that she was afraid that if he did that, she might actually murder him.

But, he didn't stop. He pushed into her with one hard, inelegant thrust; she cried out, and the noise he made was somewhere between a growl and a gasp. He felt wonderful, he felt astonishing and, as badly as she'd thought she'd wanted him, she hadn't realized until now just how badly that was, how desperately she'd craved him.

She arched her back, her legs tightened around his hips, her arms clamped across his back. He felt so right, so sublimely, exquisitely perfect. It wasn't at all what she'd imagined, and probably not what he'd intended. He and she became one creature, limbs locked, straining to touch as much of one another as they could. It was the two of them, at long last being completely honest with one other. His strokes grew rougher, more urgent, until a shudder rolled from his shoulders down through all of him. He made that noise again, half growl, half gasp, as he came.

A rush of icy blue-whiteness suffused Sigyn, chilled her like the first touch of something very cold that burned before it froze. It felt like drinking down the water from the little stone bowl. Loki tensed, lifting his head, the tendons standing out his neck. As his eyes met hers, Sigyn knew he felt it too. Whatever _it_ was. It held them captive, locked together for one exquisite moment, balanced on a knife edge between pleasure and pain, between fire and frost.

She felt _him_ , all of what he was, all of his rage and all of his regret and his terrible loneliness, and his love for her, that had neither sustained him nor offered him hope, but instead had mocked him and tormented him, because he had never, not once, entirely believed she loved him in return.

_ Oh, but I do,  _ she thought. _I do. I love you. I've never loved anyone the way I love you, because there is no one like you._

The crest of the sensation collapsed, leaving Sigyn's muscles trembling with strain, and her heartbeat rushing in her ears like waves crashing against a rock. Loki sank down beside her. They lay shoulder to shoulder, her temple resting against the curling end of one of his horns. Sigyn's breathing slowed, and her heart stopped pounding. Sweat stood out on her skin. Jotunheim's cold should have nipped at her much more keenly now that Loki was no longer on top of her, and inside of her, and wrapped all around her. But, the chill of his chambers felt only pleasant on her flushed skin. Loki, sprawled next to her, felt warm. She edged her hand across the fur, and slipped her hand into Loki's, felt him clasp her hand in response.

"What in the nine realms was _that_?" he said.

She laughed.

He added, "They might have warned us."

Sigyn lifted her free hand a few inches in a lazy shrugging motion, and let it fall back to the furs. "Perhaps everyone in Jotunheim assumes Asgardian wedding nights are like this, too."

He frowned at her, but his face had a sleepy, sated look all the same, his eyes dark and heavy-lidded, his mouth soft at the corners, with no hint of a smirk or a sneer, for once. He shifted his weight, and the bed dipped as he sat up. "You must be cold."

"Not very."

"Sigyn. You are always cold."

"These rooms are much warmer than the rest of your palace."

She rolled over, and took the opportunity to appreciate her naked husband as he stretched an arm up toward the head of the bed, and retrieved one of the furs piled there, this one brindled black and rust. The ridged patterns on his back started on either side of his neck, and converged between his shoulder blades into three lines that traced down his spine. The curved lines marking his sides were actually the open ends of two half circles.

"Thistilbardi told me the King's Chambers are built on top of a hot spring." she said.

Loki dragged the fur toward him. "Yes. There's a bathing pool."

He turned his head, and saw her watching him, and that quick, shadowed expression of self-consciousness, of shame, crossed his face, and was gone. The look that replaced it was cool, and amused, and entirely a lie.

When she'd been betrothed to Loki, her worst fear had been that she would wake up one morning to see that expression on his face, and that it would never entirely go away. They would become cordial, and then distant. She would grow to hate that expression. Eventually, she would hate him.

"You are beautiful, Loki," she said.

"My inner beauty shining through, no doubt," he said, as he unfurled the brown and black pelt over both of them.

She traced the curved ridge that encircled his throat. "I know you don't believe me. But, please do me the courtesy of not mocking me."

She expected him to argue, but instead, to her surprise, his look of sarcastic amusement disappeared, like a clenched fist relaxing.

"Forgive me. I haven't had much time to get accustomed to the idea..." He brushed her cheek with his hand, and then he tugged gently on one of her curls, pulling the lock of hair straight, then releasing it so the curl sprang back. "To several ideas, my love." He laughed softly. "My wife."

Sigyn smiled at him. "My husband."

***

Sigyn woke some time later. How much later she was not sure. The sconces on the walls had burned low. Loki's bed chamber was dark, the furnishings barely visible. Loki lay asleep next to her. He slept on his stomach, something she had not known about him, but had idly speculated about. He'd flung one arm possessively across Sigyn's stomach, and hooked one ankle over hers.

She could tell he was asleep. He breathed heavy and slow, and he didn't smell the way he usually did: the faint hint of smoke and ozone that bespoke his magic held in readiness. He smelled like the air before a snowfall, but he felt deliciously warm next to her, beneath the furs.

Pushing herself up on her elbows, Sigyn looked around the shadowy bedchamber. Something… it was familiar, but unwelcome, and it took her a moment to identify the hanging sadness and dread of the Queen's Chambers. As she realized this, the room turned cold. Her breath furled in a white cloud.

A pale, shimmering shape formed at the foot of Loki's bed. At first only a smear of gray that towered toward the ceiling, it brightened into the shape of an ettin woman. Even before her form had fully manifested, the folds of the long robe, and the shape of the features, even though Sigyn had never seen Isefrid, she knew it could be no one else but Laufey's doomed beloved.

Ice shimmered on Isefrid's skin and clothing. She regarded Sigyn with blank, bluish-white eyes, her expression wistful and longing.

"What do you want?" Sigyn asked, her voice emerging as a choked whisper.

Isefrid turned, extending one arm, and pointed toward the far wall of Loki's bedchamber, away from the windows. Deeper into the palace. She brought her hand back to her chest, and then she beckoned to Sigyn. _Follow me._

Loki stirred next to her, making a sleepy, irritable noise. Isefrid's head turned. Though her eyes were blank and shimmering as pearls, the look she gave Loki burned with malevolence. Loki, who was Laufey's only child; Loki, who was very likely the result of Laufey raping an alfin prisoner. Loki, who had betrayed and murdered Laufey.

Sigyn stretched out her arm in front of him. She had only her own feeble command of magic to shield him. But, she needn't have worried. Loki woke, lifting his head, and Isefrid vanished, the spectral cold vanishing with her.

"What is it?" he murmured sleepily. "Why are you awake?"

Sigyn considered lying to him, and rejected the idea immediately. "Isefrid," she told him. "I saw her. Here. Just now."

Wide awake now, he sat up. "Laufey's consort? How can you be certain it was she?"

Sigyn wrapped her arms around herself, and when that wasn't sufficient, she pulled her knees up to her chest, as if she were still a small child. "I felt her, Loki. When I was in the Queen's Chambers. The same... longing. The same despair. I know it was Isefrid. She wanted me to follow her."

Loki's brows drew together. Then he grabbed one of the furs on the bed, and wrapped it around Sigyn's shoulders. Sigyn shivered, not entirely with cold.

"She looked right at me. Then she vanished, the moment you woke up."

"Isefrid doesn't belong here. She belongs in Helheim."

Sigyn smelled the sharp, smoky scent of him gathering his power. When he raised one hand, she caught his wrist.

"She must be here for a reason."

"Her reason doesn't matter."

"Please, Loki. Don't."

"I was only going to light the lamps."

"And then you were going to work another spell, and banish her."

Loki sighed, but let his hand fall. His voice softened, as he replied, "Isefrid ought to be at rest. She belongs with the dead."

"Precisely. She belongs with Laufey. Yet, she is still here. She could have hurt me at any time she liked, when I was alone in the Queen's Chambers."

Loki's mouth tightened.

_ Well, that's your own fault,  _ Sigyn thought, _for making me sleep there instead of here with you._

She didn't say that, because she knew Loki was thinking exactly the same thing. Instead, she said,

"Isefrid has been waiting all this time, all alone, for someone to see her, and to heed her. You can't just banish her, Loki. It isn't fair."

Loki huffed, then said, "You are not to endanger yourself."

"Of course not."

"I am in earnest, Sigyn. You are not to follow Isefrid anywhere, without my knowing where you are."

"I'm not a child, Loki."

"You are my wife." He took hold of her by the arms. "More than half of this palace is abandoned and crumbling. The land outside is riddled with crevasses into which you might fall, caves where you could be lost forever, creatures who will eat you, and angry jotunar who might murder you. You might survive any one or more of those perils, only to freeze to death." He slid his hands down her arms, and grasped her hands. "Sigyn. If I lost you, I -- I can't. Not again."

Her cheeks flushed with a combination of embarrassment and pleasure. Getting a compliment from Loki was like walking past a tree that bent its boughs and offered fruit. He would say pretty things all day long, and perhaps he'd even mean a few of them. It was when his tongue failed him, those were the words she treasured.

She opened her mouth to reassure him, _You won't lose me._

He said swiftly, not looking at her, concentrating on their clasped hands, tightening his grip on her fingers. "Before I stepped into Jane Foster's machine, to fight the corruption, you said we could be happy here. Live a long time, and be happy."

"Yes, I remember," Sigyn said softly. "Very well. Banish Isefrid. You are right. It is far too dangerous, and she does not belong among the living."

"No." His head came up swiftly, his eyes ardent and dark. He let go of her hands and reached up to catch her face between his hands. "No, that isn't what I meant. Follow her." Loki brushed his fingertips down her cheeks, letting his hands fall, lower, to her shoulders, bared above the top of the fur blanket. "Help her find peace."

Sigyn nodded, unable to find her voice, as Loki leaned forward to press his face against her throat.

"After all, " he whispered in her ear, "You are quite good at that."

Sigyn flung herself at him, clasping her arms around his neck, holding him tight and kissing him fiercely. He broke the kiss, stopping her with one hand against her shoulder.

"I have one condition," he said. "You are not to sleep in the Queen's Chambers any longer. I want you here. With me."

On that point, Sigyn wasn't inclined to argue. Not at all.

***


	4. Chapter 4

The next morning, Loki gave her a bracelet.

"Not worthy of a queen," he said, as he knotted the bracelet around her left wrist, "but it was the best I could do on short notice."

Complicated knots bound a green ribbon to a tightly twisted rope of black, which Sigyn realized was a lock of Loki's hair. He'd woven an animal tooth into the bracelet as well. The tooth was about as long as Sigyn's thumb and, though it was pointed, it wasn't sharp. The bone had turned glossy, deep amber with age. She felt magic imbedded in the tooth, a deep pulse beating through the bone, into the knots of the bracelet.

"It's a milk tooth from a grimulf calf," Loki explained. "While you wear this, I can find you wherever you are."

He brushed his thumbs across the thin skin of her wrist. A tingle in her skin signaled a spell at work. When Sigyn turned her hand over, the bracelet had no fastening. It was an unbroken band.

"I nearly lost you once, in Kambrekk," he said. "If you hadn't touched the sleeve of my coat, when I met you in my mother's garden, I wouldn't have found you at all." He let go of her arm, seeming reluctant to release her. "I'll remove it, if you ask. But, I'd rather you didn't ask, until Isefrid is gone."

"I won't ask," Sigyn said. "You're right. I might very well be putting myself in danger." She ran a fingertip over the bracelet. Its meshing textures invited her fingers to fiddle with it. "Thank you, Loki."

A frown drew his brows together. "I can't very well forbid you. I know you'll do exactly as you please."

"True," Sigyn said with a laugh.

***

Later that day, there was feasting and drinking to rival any wedding feast in Asgard. The palace staff had opened one of the huge, abandoned halls in the palace, and prepared it for the wedding celebration. When Sigyn had first seen the hall, it had been chilly and dismal. Now it blazed with light -- not only the ever-present sconces of blue lichen, but a small galaxy of twinkling orbs drifted near the ceiling. Those, Sigyn knew, had been brought from Alfheim. Trade relations with Alfheim were progressing quite well, evidently

Sigyn's wedding feast marked the first time she had been seated at the high table for a celebration. In Vanaheim, even at her father's house, women did not sit at the high table. It felt strange to sit near the center of the table, with Loki to her left, and Thor to her right. It had been stranger still, when the seat on her right had been occupied by the Allfather. He and Queen Frigga had departed for Asgard hours hence, with Sigyn's own mother and father -- but Thor seemed determined to stay until he had drained a goblet with every last guest at his brother's wedding.

Loki laughed and jested, but Sigyn could tell from the set of his shoulders that a tight wire of tension ran through him. It ran through Sigyn as well. the bracelet Loki had given her that morning lay hidden under the sleeve of her pale golden coat, but all through the celebration, the grimulf tooth pressed against her wrist, a silent reminder of Isefrid.

At long last, Sigyn grew tired of stifling her yawns, and she rose to her feet. Immediately, Loki did likewise.

"Stay," she told him. "I don't mind."

Thor caught her by the wrist. "You cannot leave us so soon. I am not finished celebrating your extraordinary good fortune, Loki."

" _My_ good fortune, you mean," Sigyn demurred.

Thor leaned toward her, and said with precise, drunken earnestness, "No. I most certainly do not."

Loki laughed. Sigyn felt his hand touch her waist, just above her hip.

"I cannot but agree with you, brother," he said. "However, my wife is tired. As am I."

Thor stood up, shoving his chair back with a loud scrape across the stone floor. Before Loki could evade Thor, Thor seized him, and dragged him into a hug, pounding him on the back. "I am happy for you, Loki." He let go of Loki, and then pushed him out to arm's length and stared fixedly at him. "Very happy for you," he said decidedly.

Then he turned on Sigyn. _Oh no_ \-- was all she had time to think, before Thor crushed her. He kissed her on the cheek, all heat and bristly beard and mead-leather-metal smell, and then he released her.

Then he winked at her. "I knew he loved you all this time."

"Thor," she said. "Thank you. For your steadfastness. And for your faith in your brother."

"You're welcome." Thor picked up his goblet again, toasted her with it, then turned to include Loki. "A good night to you both, and many good nights to follow."

Many more goodnights were said, she and Loki accepted many good wishes, and at long last, they escaped the feasting hall and stepped out into the corridor. As the doors closed behind them, the darkness and silence were startling. Loki glanced behind him.

"You may stay with your brother and the other guests, if you like," said Sigyn.

He shook his head. "No. It is only… I wonder how long it has been since that hall was opened for a celebration."

"Likely a very long time."

He took her hand, running his thumb across the grimulf-tooth bracelet. His eyes were shadowed, and there were lines of tension at the corners of his mouth. The sooner Isefrid appeared, the sooner the mystery of her appearance might be solved, and the sooner she would be gone.

They did not make love that night. Sigyn could not blame Loki for being reluctant -- or perhaps _apprehensive_ was a better word. By unspoken agreement, they had avoided the subject of their wedding night, and the strange, wild magic that had seized them.

They lay underneath the furs, in Loki's ridiculously large bed, not touching, wakeful in the darkness, like a husband and wife who had grown tired of one another.

The silence lengthened like shadows, until Loki said, "Who was he?"

She knew exactly who he meant. He knew she knew. No one else but Loki would ask her that question, one night after his wedding, in the same bed where he'd made love to her. Quintessentially Loki, and yet he had still caught her off guard. That, too, was quintessentially Loki.

He added, "Your lover. Is he someone I know?"

Sigyn sighed gustily, and rolled over onto her side to face him.

After Loki had broken their betrothal, Sigyn had taken several lovers. Her mother's harping on Vanir tradition and a bride's purity didn't seem to matter anymore. When Sigyn had believed Loki dead, she'd taken another lover, in a pointless attempt to seek comfort.

Unexpectedly, her throat tightened. Loki lay near enough that she felt the warmth of his body, yet the memory of mourning his death, of cursing his choice to end his own life, still ached inside of her. She had been so close by. She had been in Asgard, in the Allfather's palace, for Thor's coronation. _You could have come to me. You could have unburdened yourself to me._ She'd lost count of the times she'd thought that. But, he never would have. Not after what he'd done to her, the spell he'd worked on her; she knew that now. At the time, she'd known his pride would never let him admit he'd been wrong.

She could refuse to answer the question, but he would keep asking until he got an answer, even if he knew the answer would displease him.

She'd apparently held silent too long. Loki said, with a terrible, chilly finality: "Thor."

"No." Sigyn recoiled, startled. " _No._ Thor is your brother. I've never thought of him in any other way. Even if I had been of that mind, he…"

Even in the depths of Sigyn's own grief, her heart had broken for Thor. She'd feared he would never smile again. But, Loki could not have known that. Thor wouldn't have told him, and clever as Loki was, he'd never seemed to understand just how precious he was to his elder brother. Sigyn was not about to tell him; he already had far too much with which to reproach himself.

"Ah," Loki said. "Jane Foster. Of course."

"Yes," Sigyn said quickly, relieved. "Lady Jane of Midgard."

"Then, if not Thor…"

She said gently, "Does it matter so much to you?"

The furs rustled as Loki turned on his side, toward her. "It shouldn't," he admitted. "But it does. I'm not angry with you. It's no one's fault but my own. I've been certain for so long that it was Thor, and that you were too kind to tell me.

Sigyn said gently, "It was Fandral."

If she had to throw someone under the hooves of a bilgesnipe, it might as well be someone who would shrug off Loki's ire.

_ "Fandral?" _ Loki sounded so affronted. She smiled, glad that the darkness hid it.

"I won't apologize," she said. "You were dead."

"Fandral the Dashing has bedded half of Asgard, and three-quarters of Alfheim."

"With you and Thor picking up the slack, I am sure."

"Not _I_." He was ruffled up now. " _I_ had far better uses for my time than vain, sweaty, indiscriminate _rutting_ \--"

Sigyn laughed. Loki uttered a put-upon huff. Then, after a moment, his fingers touched her arm lightly, trailing down toward the bend of her elbow, and upward to her wrist.

"I did seek a bed. Sometimes. As a necessity. One of the... partners I sought out, she told me I was cold. Cold in the heart, and cold to the touch." He laughed softly. "I should have known right then what I was."

Sigyn drew breath to speak again, but a faint echo of him touched her mind, mingled with a thread of crystalline singing: The Casket. Sigyn held her breath, but in another instant, it was gone. Loki sighed, as if he too had been holding his breath. Another silence elapsed softly, sleep gathering in its wake, and falling over both of them like a snowdrift.

***

Sigyn woke to the bed chamber suffused with spectral cold. As she shifted onto her back, away from Loki's warmth, Loki's arm tightened across her stomach. He neither moved nor spoke, but he was awake. The grimulf-tooth bracelet around her wrist was awake as well, a subtle vibration humming through it

The white mist formed at the foot of the bed and, despite the dread and sadness gathering in the room, Sigyn pushed back the furs and slipped from the bed. She was already clad in her long chemise, and she hurried to tug her boots on, her fingers trembling with cold and fear. She snatched up the long, black fur robe Loki had left draped across the arm of the couch.

Isefrid towered over Sigyn. Just as she had the night before, she pointed, and then stared at Sigyn with her eerie, snowblind eyes. The chill bed chamber bit so keenly that the bracelet around Sigyn's wrist felt like a thin band of fire.

When Isefrid beckoned, Sigyn followed.

The spirit led her through the King's Chambers and, insubstantial, she passed through the stone door without pausing. Annoyance banished some of Sigyn's trepidation. She walked to the door, and pulled it open. Isefrid awaited her in the hallway beyond.

The guards stationed in the corridor took no notice of Isefrid, nor of the terrible cold that surrounded Sigyn. But they bowed to Sigyn, silent, stolid and unquestioning.

Sigyn's steps faltered, and halted. _Was this a dream? Had she dreamed of waking, of slipping out of the bed? Was she still asleep, warm in Loki's arms?_

"Majesty?" one of the guards asked her.

Sigyn glanced up at the ettin, smiled, and shook her head. "'Tis nothing, Svardir. Thank you."

Ultimately, it made no difference whether Isefrid was a ghost, or a visitation in a dream. The hanging sorrow in the Queen's Chambers was real. Sigyn followed Isefrid down the corridor toward the great hall, running her thumb and forefinger nervously over the bracelet, from glossy-smooth grimulf tooth, to the bumps of the knotted cord, and around again.

The Casket of Ancient Winters was the only illumination in the great hall, throwing its flickering, shifting light up over the walls and columns. Isefrid led Sigyn toward it. The closer Isefrid approached the Casket, the deeper grew the cold. She stretched out one hand to touch the Casket. Her hand passed through the Casket, but the Casket reacted to Isefrid's touch with a flare of light that glittered across the sheen of ice that coated Isefrid.

Again, Isefrid beckoned to Sigyn, and repeated her gesture of touching the Casket.

Sigyn shook her head. "I cannot," she said, her breath escaping in a white plume.

Isefrid's brow creased. Again, she beckoned. Again, she touched the Casket. Another flare of light sprang from it.

"I am not jotun," Sigyn said. "I cannot touch the Casket. It will kill me."

A third time, Isefrid repeated her entreaty.

_ "No,"  _ Sigyn gasped, her heart beginning to beat faster. Perhaps Isefrid _did_ mean her harm, was envious of her happiness with Loki. Or, perhaps Isefrid wished to avenge Laufey's murder by slaying his murderer's bride.

Sigyn backed away from Isefrid, and from the Casket. Isefrid stretched out a hand. Her lips moved, but her words were utterly silent.

"No," Sigyn said again. "I won't follow you. Not again."

Isefrid's scowl deepened. She lunged for Sigyn, her long arm looping out to seize Sigyn. Sigyn shrank back, terrified that the ghost's icy touch would kill her. Isefrid drew back as well, letting her hands fall to her sides. Again, she beckoned to Sigyn, then gestured behind her, toward the Casket. Her expression of fury was gone, replaced by hopeless distress.

"I'm sorry," Sigyn said. "I can't. I won't."

Isefrid seemed on the verge of saying something more -- but she disappeared abruptly, like a wisp of fog scattered by a breeze. The spectral cold vanished with her. Sigyn gasped, half in surprise, and half in relief.

"You are awake quite late, Majesty."

Sigyn spun around with a gasp. She recognized Thistilbardi's voice even before she saw the old ettin.

"Forgive me," Thistilbardi said. "I did not mean to startle you. I thought surely you had heard me approach."

She should have. Thistilbardi walked slowly, and aided himself with a gnarled staff. Its distinctive tap-tap on the stone floors of the palace always heralded his approach through the echoing hallways and rooms, long before Thistilbardi himself appeared.

Sigyn forced herself to smile. "You are awake quite late yourself."

The ettin bent his head to her. "The three who walk at night," he said.

Sigyn's chest clenched painfully. "The... three?"

He laughed. "An old ettin saying. The three who walk at night are the dead, the dying, and the guilty."

"You are none of those three, Thistilbardi," she said.

But, she didn't know that. Thistilbardi might well have murdered someone.

"These old bones don't rest easy." He laid his hands on the knobbed head of his staff, and looked down at her, his expression grave. "Will you accept my advice? I offered it to you once before, but it seems you did not take it."

"And what is that?" She couldn't remember anything Thistilbardi had said to her that applied to this particular situation.

"Jotun law still permits His Majesty to take a queen -- a _jotun_ queen, while you serve as his consort. But, we both know he will never do so. It will be your child who sits on the throne."

Sigyn smiled again; the smile felt the sort Loki might wear on his face. "You call me 'Your Majesty,' though I am merely the king's consort."

"To me, and to many, you are Jotunheim's queen." Thistilbardi lifted his chin, gesturing at the Casket behind Sigyn. "Do not let it destroy you, the way it destroyed King Laufey's consort."

Sigyn glanced back over her shoulder. There was no sign of Isefrid. Only the Casket, and its never-ceasing dance of light. "But... was it not trial Isefrid needed to pass, to become queen?"

"Perhaps she felt she must be Laufey's queen," Thistilbardi replied. "To be certain of Laufey's love. I know not. I only know it was a foolish risk and a pointless death, and our realm's history is full of those already. I beg you, my lady, do not become another tragic tale in a book."

Sigyn snorted softly. "I've never been the sort for grandiose gestures. That's more His Majesty's style."

One grandiose gesture of Loki's in particular, had brought Sigyn to the broken edge of the Bifrost, where she had stood for a long while, considering how one step forward, quite a small gesture on her part, would end the emptiness inside of her.

"I shall take your advice to heart," she added. "Thank you, Thistilbardi."

Sigyn returned to Loki's chambers, through the dark and silent halls of the palace. At the side of the bed, she took off her boots, and slipped out of Loki's robe, draping it across the arm of the couch. She climbed under the furs, and settled herself against Loki's long, slender back, laying her forehead against the nape of his neck. His hair, heavy and silky, brushed her cheeks and nose.

"Where did she lead you?" he murmured. He was awake, of course -- or more likely, he'd never fallen back to sleep, after she'd departed with Isefrid.

"To the great hall," Sigyn replied. "She wanted me to touch the Casket." Loki tensed against her, and Sigyn added, "I don't understand why. She knows I can't."

"Do you still believe she intends you no harm?"

Incredibly, Sigyn felt herself getting sleepy, now that the night's adventure was over, and she was safe in bed once more. "I don't know. She could have led me anywhere, as you said. Into a cave, or a crevasse..."

She yawned, and curled closer to Loki, tucking her knees up under his thighs, and spreading her hand across Loki's chest, her fingertips tracing the ridged double line that ran down its center. Loki released a long sigh. Possibly contentment, more probably frustration. His fingers curled around her wrist, around the bracelet, and held her there, close to him.

***

Early in their courtship, he took her to a place at the top of the falls, a place he claimed only he knew of. Sigyn wasn't sure if she believed this; she didn't _entirely_ believe anything he told her. He assured her he was an excellent pilot, that she had no need to fear, and she didn't believe that, either.

The elegant little flyer he wanted her to ride in looked no more steady or safe than an upturned leaf. It was so small that it fit only her, and Loki, and the picnic basket between her feet. Loki lifted it out of its docking slip smoothly, but Sigyn sat stiffly upright, both hands gripping the low sides.

She worked up her courage to peek over the side of the flyer only once. Far below, other flyers sparkled in the sunlight like golden dragonflies. The rushing, tumbling river near the palace was a blue ribbon strung between the gray rock walls of the valley. Trees and green vines clung to the edge of the cliffs, dripping with white flowers. That was where he brought the flyer to a gentle landing, on the far side of the valley, atop the cliffs. He leapt out lightly, and then reached up a hand to assist her.

Sigyn laid her hand in his, scooped up the skirts of her gown with her free hand, and stepped down onto soft grass, dotted with tiny purple flowers. Loki's hand in hers felt cool, and calloused from weapons practice.

The cliff top where he'd landed was barely larger than the flyer, and shadowed by large, wind-twisted trees, their trunks wrapped with vines. It was beautiful but wild, as if the Allfather's attention rarely strayed this far from his palace. The view was spectacular. The palace and the city were almost lost in the mist rising from the falls. The wheelhouse of the Bifrost was a golden spark at the far end of the shimmering rainbow bridge.

Loki laid their picnic on the ground: cold fowl and cheese, fruit and fresh bread, and iced mead. Everything tasted delicious, of course. She had never partaken of anything in Asgard that wasn't perfectly prepared. She spent the entire meal fretting about leaves and grass stains on her skirts. How her mother would tsk-tsk and glare, and lecture her about Asgardians and their concupiscence.

As if he knew exactly what she was thinking, Loki stretched out on the grass, and laid his head on her lap. Sigyn flinched in surprise.

He tipped his chin back and looked up at her. "Would you like me to move?" His mouth curving in a lazy smile, he added, "I'd rather not."

"Stay," she said.

She leaned back against the tree trunk. The bark was as smooth as if it had been polished by a careful craftsman, and her back found a perfect divot that cradled her like a chair. She brushed a lock of his black hair back from his brow, then plucked a leaf out of it. He closed his eyes like a contented cat. She'd never thought him handsome, and she'd never cared that he wasn't. Clever, mercurial, sarcastic, and charming: that was Prince Loki. But, as he lay indolently in the dappled sunlight, no longer cast in shadow by his father and his brother, she was startled to realize how beautiful he was.

"What are you thinking?" Loki asked, without opening his eyes.

Sigyn's cheeks flushed; she had no idea what to say to him. He opened his eyes, looked up at her, and a crease appeared between his eyebrows.

"Do you bring all your conquests here?" She smiled, to take the sting out of her words, but she suspected her smile wasn't as blithe as she wanted it to be.

"My _conquests_?"

"I know there must be others."

"I make no conquests," Loki said, as he sat up. "Why should I? I'm a son of Odin. If anything, _I_ am the conquest."

"You've made a conquest of me," Sigyn pointed out.

"Yes, and you of me."

She touched his mouth at the corner, where his smile was sharpest.

"Sigyn," he began. "I..."

She leaned forward and kissed him. Loki caught his breath, and his mouth opened to hers, gentle and then more eager. Let there be leaves on her dress, and grass in her hair; she no longer cared. His hand slid underneath her heavy braids, cupping the nape of her neck, anchoring her as a wave of sweet, dizzy heat washed through her, and left her trembling.

***


	5. Chapter 5

Isefrid did not return the next night, nor the night after that. Sigyn hoped she'd seen the last of Isefrid; twice she had refused to touch the Casket, and that might be the end of that. Yet, it seemed too easy. When she voiced her thoughts to Loki, he shrugged.

"We don't know what compelled her to visit you in the first place," he said, without looking up from the Midgardian tablet in his hand.

"She did not visit me until I married you," Sigyn pointed out. "What could keep her from walking now?"

"Any number of things." Loki set his mug of tea on a pile of books that lay open on the table in front of him. "A curse, an unfavorable phase of one of Jotunheim's moons, some condition you fulfilled, inadvertently. It's impossible to know, without asking Isefrid herself. And she never speaks, didn't you say?"

"I did." Sigyn picked up the teacup and set it on the table, where it was less likely to tip over. "That's all right. It doesn't matter." 

She bent to kiss his cheek. Loki's fingertips brushed the side of her throat, as she drew away. A trilling whisper drifted through Sigyn's mind, but she couldn't be sure she hadn't imagined it. 

She added, "You have work to do. I won't distract you."

He frowned. His eyes were troubled. But he let her go. There would always be work for him to do.

Sigyn walked into the bed chamber, and unbuttoned her short, gray alfin jacket, stepped out of her boots and skirt, and the cloud-soft woolen trousers underneath, laid all of her clothing across the foot of Loki's bed. Naked save for the grimulf-tooth bracelet she couldn't remove, Sigyn walked through the arched doorway to the bathing pool.

Sitting down on the edge of the pool, she eased her legs into the steaming water, and shivered with delight. Near the edge of the pool were several dishes of a greenish-gray soap that smelled of salt and fragrant herbs, as well as bottles and jars, some from Asgard, some from Midgard, and some from Alfheim. Loki had left the stoppers and lids off of several. Yutta would see to that, of course. Yutta adored Loki. Sigyn adored Loki as well; she closed lids and stoppered bottles before they spilled. Then she slid down into the water, groping with her toes until she found the low ledge built for an ettin to sit on.

She washed her hair with a Midgardian shampoo that smelled like honey, then picked up a bar of the gray soap, and scrubbed her skin. She ducked into the water, submerging herself entirely. Below the surface, the pool was dim, fading into darkness. She had no idea how deep it was. She stayed under for a moment or two, enjoying the warm currents of water moving across her skin, rushing up from the hot spring that fed the pool.

When she broke the surface, shaking her wet curls out of her face, Loki stood at the edge of the pool, his arms folded over his chest.

"I can hear you splashing about," he told her. "How am I supposed to draft a trade contract with Nidavellir, when I know you haven't got any clothing on?"

Sigyn widened her eyes innocently. "My goodness, what a _dreadful_ problem. How do you propose we solve it?"

Loki began to unbutton his dark purple coat. "I'm certain I can think of something." Shrugging out of the coat, he tossed it across an alfin-sized bench.

Sigyn over to the edge of the pool, and propped her arms on the stone lip. Loki took his clothes off, his movements graceful as ever, but expediently swift, which she knew was not entirely motivated by his desire to be naked in the bath with her as soon as possible. She didn't offer him privacy by looking away. She didn't want to; she loved to look at him. He'd just have to get used to that.

Loki lowered himself into the water next to her, his eyes half-closing in pleasure.

Sigyn wrapped her arms around his neck, pulled him close, and said, "Now. About those trade contracts."

He made an irritated noise, and nuzzled his face against the side of her neck.

"There are several clauses we ought to discuss immediately," she added.

"Mmm," he said.

Sigyn kissed him. Loki returned her kiss, his mouth warm and ardent against hers. When she felt his tongue brush her lips, she opened for him eagerly. Kiss her was all he did, for the longest, the sweetest of moments, even though they were pressed together naked. He kissed her as if he were trying to make up for all the kisses they had never shared, for every time he dropped his clothing on the floor and his cups of tea tilted at precarious angles, for how most of him ended up on top of her he was asleep, for every terrible, dark deed, and for every spiteful word. His hands touched her with reverence, and she forgave him for everything.

"There are times I cannot believe you're real," he murmured. "Thanos..." His hands tightened on her arms, and he straightened abruptly. "What am I thinking? Not an appropriate topic at all." His mouth twisted in a crooked smile. "My apologies, Sigyn."

"If you wish to speak of it, Loki, then speak. I will listen."

He had spoken of his time among the Chitauri only once, and never again. His gaze flicked away from her.

"Thanos drew you from my mind," he said. "He knew your face and your form would convince me to do his bidding. You were cruel, because I expected you to be cruel. I deserved your cruelty. I never thought you would give me anything else."

"I was not exactly welcoming to you when I met you in Asgard," she pointed out.

He traced his fingertips down the edge of her cheek. "Very nearly your first words to me, were to ask me if I was unwell."

"I'd forgotten about that." She'd spent most of the time in Kambrekk and in Gislavotn, and then in Midgard, itching to slap Loki for being so stubbornly determined to rescue her, and then slap him again for not being dead. "But, I was only being polite," she added. "Anyone would have --"

Loki grasped her around the waist and lifted her out of the water. She grabbed his shoulders to keep her balance.

"Loki, what are you doing?"

By way of reply, Loki set her on the lip of the pool, where he was in a perfect position to…

"Oh," said Sigyn, as he pushed her knees apart. "Well. If you insist."

As Loki tugged her toward him, Sigyn lay back on the warm stone floor. Her head came to rest on Loki's coat, which had slid off the bench. She stretched her arms down, tangling her fingers into his hair. He went to work with his fingers, and his clever, clever tongue, flicking and rubbing and licking, his fingers slowly gliding into her and out again, until she was squirming on the floor, her wet hair stuck to her forehead and her cheeks. The ceiling of the bathing pool above her twined with sea creatures and water weeds. A dart of fear flashed through Sigyn: what if it happened again, that icy bright burn of their wedding night -- but she wanted him, she needed him now, _right now_. She arched up, clutching his shoulders as she came in a rush of tingling, dizzy heat that fired through her entire body. Her cry of pleasure echoed off the domed ceiling of the bathing chamber.

With a splash, Loki pushed himself up and out of the pool. Water cascaded over Sigyn as he covered her body with his own. He rolled over and dragged her on top of him. She landed straddling his hips. As she leaned down over him to kiss him, pinning him to the floor, and he tensed. Panic sparked on his face for an instant, before the cool and self-possessed mask that she hated, fell into place.

"Loki? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." His voice was oddly flat.

She didn't need to ask him what was wrong; she was fairly certain she knew. She laid her hand lightly on his chest, and sat back. Loki hissed and narrowed his eyes, as her leg brushed his erection.

"I don't mind being on the bottom," she said, "if you prefer the top."

He looked startled, then he laughed. Shifting his weight, he grasped her by the waist again, and sat up. Sigyn tilted backward over the bathing pool. She looped one arm around his neck, holding on to him, and raised herself up on her knees. With her free hand, she reached between them, and found him with her fingers. His eyes went half-lidded.

"Better?" she said.

"Yes. Better."

Sigyn lowered herself onto his cock, filling herself with him slowly.

"Oh…" he sighed, closing his eyes, "Oh, now... that's _much_ better…"

She began with the best intentions. She meant to take her time. Enjoy him, leisurely. However, the way they were positioned, embracing tightly to keep their balance on the lip of the pool, she couldn't. She found herself grinding against him in a very unladylike way, her hips rolling against his, her breasts rubbing against his chest with every stroke. Loki seized her by the back of the head, fingers digging into her wet hair, and kissed her ferociously, thrusting his tongue into her mouth, his other hand indenting her buttocks, as he held her tight against him.

Loki threw his head back with a sharp groan, his eyes nearly black, the pupils showing only a rim of crimson at their edges. His hips lifted her up once, and again, and she felt a rush of liquid heat inside her. Sigyn was only a heartbeat behind him, this climax less intense than the first, a slow explosion that rolled upward from the crux of her legs, through her stomach and her chest. As she eased down into Loki's lap, she caught the fleeting echo of the Casket's song, the shadow of Loki within her thoughts. Or she imagined that she did.

They stayed like that, still joined, arms wrapped around one another, as their heartbeats slowed, and she felt him slip from inside of her.

"Cold?" he murmured against her skin.

"I haven't felt cold since our wedding night."

"How flattering."

Leaning back in the strong circle of his arms, she studied his face. "Your skin used to feel a little bit cold to me. Every time I touched you." She brushed her fingers across his lower lip. "Not that I ever minded. But, you feel quite warm to me now. Sometimes, I…" She faltered, suddenly embarrassed to confess what might be nothing more than her own romantic fancy.

The skin between Loki's eyebrows creased. "Sometimes, you what?"

Sigyn shook her head, and said quickly, "Sometimes, I think I hear the Casket. And you. A sense of you." She lifted her hand, searching for the best way to explain herself. "As if you'd just left the room, a moment before."

"Some spells are delicate," Loki replied, tracing a finger along her collarbone. "Once you focus your attention on them, once you begin to pick them apart to see how they're constructed, or ask yourself when or why they work --" He shrugged one shoulder. "That's when they fall apart."

***

Something in Loki's heart invariably drew him to the closest library. More often than not, it was where she had found him in Asgard. He had not changed at all, in that respect.

She and he had been working for several hours, sitting across from one another at one of the long stone tables in his palace library, with Loki's books and maps and notes spread between them. The library was vast, and not very well lit, crowded by towering shelves, too many of them empty of books. Drafts sighed hollowly between the bookcases. Replenishing the library's store of knowledge wasn't high on Loki's list of priorities; the welfare of his people came first. But, he never said no to donations. Volumes from Asgard and Midgard were stacked haphazardly beside massive tomes penned by the ettin.

Sigyn began to hope, cautiously, that the worst was behind them. The past few weeks had been peaceful. She rarely saw Loki during the day, but once darkness fell, and his duties to his people were done for the night, he was hers. Some nights, they made love. Other nights, they curled up together underneath the furs. They talked now, instead of arguing. When they did not talk, the silence between them no longer felt weighted by words unsaid.

If she thought she heard the Casket's song, or if she felt certain her husband was thinking of her, or if the grimulf-tooth bracelet around her wrist felt like her husband's fingers brushing her skin -- she did not mention it to Loki. They did not speak of those things at all.

She hoped they might build a marriage on the many things they did speak of now; that they might become companions, as well as lovers. That it might not be too late for them, after all.

That was a thought she had voiced to Loki. He'd smiled and called her fanciful, just as she'd expected he would, but there was no scorn in his smile.

Soft, quick footsteps came down the short flight of steps leading from the corridor outside the library. Sigyn glanced up. It was Myrfir, one of the servants. Sigyn removed her feet from where they'd been propped on Loki's outstretched leg, and placed them on the floor.

Myrfir pressed his hand to his heart, and bowed. "Your pardon, Majesties, but Gauthild has sent me to bring you, Sire, to the great hall."

Loki laid down his pen. "For what purpose?"

Myrfir took a breath, braced himself, and replied, "Gauthild's soldiers discovered Kolvaldr Kolfgnarson not far from the palace. The son of Kolfgnar asked to be brought to the palace. He wishes to petition you."

"Tell Gauthild I shall be there presently."

"Yes, Majesty." Myrfir bobbed a quick bow, and hurried out of the library.

"Well," Loki said, as he rose to his feet. "So much for our quiet morning."

Sigyn pushed back her chair, and stood up.

Loki lifted a hand to her. "No need for you to inconvenience yourself, my love. This won't take long."

By law, it was Kolvaldr's right to be heard. But, Kolvaldr obviously hadn't returned to the palace to petition Loki. Kolvaldr had returned to challenge him. It was also Kolvaldr's right to challenge the king, and Loki couldn't refuse, without jeopardizing his own claim to the throne.

Sigyn drew her shoulders back, preparing herself for an argument. "I'm going with you."

Loki only smiled and held out an arm to her, as if he were about to escort her through the gardens of the Allfather's palace. Sigyn stepped around the table, and slipped her arm through Loki's, resting her hand in the crook of his elbow.

Gauthild came striding swiftly across the great hall toward Loki, and swept into a bow. Behind her, Kolvaldr stood surrounded by guards.

"Majesties," Gauthild said. "Forgive me."

Loki shook his head. "No matter, Gauthild. It is all right."

Gauthild pressed her lips together, but she didn't reply.

"The usurper and his concubine," Kolvaldr said, a sneer stretching his mouth. "I suppose you know why I am here."

Loki made a careless "go ahead" gesture with one hand. His face didn't have the look of cool boredom that Sigyn expected. Instead, his brow was furrowed, his mouth tight with resignation.

Kolvaldr declared, "I, Kolvaldr Kolfgnarson, brother of Kolfjollmarr, challenge you, Loki, son of Odin, son of Borr, for the throne of Jotunheim."

Sparing Kolfjollmarr had been a mistake. Loki knew it, and Sigyn knew it as well. Kolvaldr's brother would have met a swift, honorable death at Loki's hands, and Kolvaldr might have been satisfied with that.

"Very well," Loki said. "Gauthild. Escort Her Majesty to ---"

Kolvaldr interrupted him, "Oh, but Lady Sigyn, you are not leaving so soon, surely?"

"I have no wish to watch you die, Kolvaldr Kolfgnarson," Sigyn replied.

Kolvaldr smiled coldly. "You seem certain of my fate."

"I am certain of my husband."

"Admirable devotion. But, I insist that you remain, as a proper jotun would. You _are_ jotun now -- or so you told me the first time we met. Or, are you only jotun when it suits you?"

Sigyn stiffened. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Loki's shoulders draw back.

"Very well," she told Kolvaldr. "I shall stay, since you insist I watch you die humiliated."

Kolvaldr chuckled, and then he bowed to her. "Little queen. You speak like a jotun."

Sign turned her back on Kolvaldr, and walked to where Brisenndyr was just entering the great hall, with Myrfir close on her heels. Brisenndyr glanced at Sigyn, then past her, and she rolled her eyes when she caught sight of Kolvaldr.

_ "Ettin…"  _ she said, folding her arms across her chest. "Why must they _always_ be so…"

"So ettin?" Gauthild suggested wryly, as she took her place on Sigyn's other side.

Brisenndyr snorted, amused.

Kolvaldr said to Loki, "Name the time and the place of your defeat. As the challenged, it is your right."

Loki spread his arms. "By all means. Let us get this over with."

Kolvaldr smiled. "But there is no circle of combat, Majesty."

"I don't mind if you don't."

"I have no objection." Kolvaldr took three steps back from Loki.

Loki lifted his hands slightly, readying himself. He frowned slightly, either confused or irritated by something Sigyn didn't catch. Kolvaldr turned on Sigyn instead, his hand lashing in her direction. Brisenndyr and Gauthild sprang to protect her, but a sickening jolt twisted Sigyn's vitals, as if Kolvaldr had yanked an invisible rope.

A swirl of ice-white sparking with green, darted from Loki's hand at Kolvaldr. Sigyn heard the Casket shriek in answer, and Kolvaldr staggered back, snarling in pain, his arm bloodied and studded with daggers of ice.

The strange feeling inside of Sigyn was gone; she felt only faint and shaky. Whatever Kolvaldr had tried to do, he had failed.

Loki struck again, sending a huge wedge of ice shearing at Kolvaldr. It hit the ettin in the chest, hurling him off his feet. He crashed to the stone floor. Loki drew himself up, gathering his magic. Sigyn had no doubt he would kill Kolvaldr now. The Casket flared with light, and outside, over the courtyard the sky darkened ominously.

Kolvaldr pushed himself up on one elbow, lifted a hand toward Loki and twisted his wrist. Loki countered with an impatient flick of his hand that Sigyn recognized as a defensive ward. The air cracked with magic, flared with a dark red light that rushed over her vision. Brisenndyr grabbed her by the arm. Sigyn stumbled, but caught herself. Like the first rush of magic, this one subsided almost immediately. Yet, it took her a moment to realize what she was seeing, because it made no sense.

Loki stood motionless, trapped in a prison of shimmering dark red, a light like the Companion Fire. Sigyn's heart sank, but she had no time two dwell on the feeling. Fiery agony ripped through her, starting a the tips of her fingers and racing up her arms. She could not even scream. The pain was too swift and too all-encompassing. Her legs crumpled under her. As swiftly as the pain had ignited, it was gone. She could not even brace herself to keep from falling, but she never hit the stone floor. Strong hands caught her, huge hands, lifting her as if she weighed nothing. Gauthild had caught her.

Kolvaldr rose to his feet, surrounded by a circle of ice blades.

"Majesty?" Gauthild said. "Are you all right?"

Sigyn straightened, and stepped away from her. "Yes. My thanks, Gauthild." She turned on Kolvaldr. "What have you done?" Her voice did not come out strong and ringing across the hall. She sounded as shaken and afraid as she felt. "What have you done to him?"

"I am not powerful enough to defeat the Asgardian. Not in strength, nor in sorcery." Kolvaldr spread his hands in a shrug. "But one simple, alfin spell--"

"You lying filth!" Brisenndyr exclaimed. "No alfin would betray our secrets to an ettin!"

"Not every alfin loves the usurper as you do, princess."

Brisenndyr snarled wordlessly and flung herself at Kolvaldr.

"Stop!" Sigyn said.

She half-expected Brisenndyr would not heed her, but Brisenndyr spun around, pinning Sigyn with a furious glare.

Sigyn said, "Kolvaldr Kolfgnarson will be dealt with. But, the law…" She faltered in the face of Brisenndyr's fury. "The law of the realm must apply to everyone."

Brisenndyr stood poised and tense, then she conceded, the ice blades sheathing in her hands. She nodded to Sigyn.

"Do you mean to bring me before a tribunal?" Kolvaldr drawled, amused. "Jotun law gives me the right to rule Jotunheim, if I defeat the king."

"The law gives you the right to rule Jotunheim, if you _kill_ the king," Sigyn said, "Or if he surrenders to you. King Loki has not surrendered."

"Has he not? He cannot strike at me, without injuring you. He has tried once already, and you have felt the pain of it. He cannot slay me without causing your death. And that he will never do. He would let Jotunheim crumble and all of the jotunar perish, before he would bring harm to you." Kolvaldr swept a gaze around the great hall, at the ettin and the alfin gathered there, at guards and servants and royal council members all, who had hastened into the great hall to watch Loki dispatch yet another challenger to his throne. "Your beloved Asgardian is no longer fit to rule you."

Gauthild's large hand pressed against Sigyn's back, and the ettin murmured, "Challenge him."

Sigyn was no warrior, no sorceress. No match for Kolvaldr.

"Kolvaldr Kolfgnarson," she said.

Kolvaldr's head swung toward her. He looked surprised. Amused. Indulgent.

"I challenge you." Now Sign's voice emerged with the ringing strength she'd wanted before. "For the right to rule Jotunheim."

As she'd expected, roars of scornful laughter burst from Kolvaldr. Another streak of fiery pain ribboned through her, much more faintly, as if Loki had slammed a fist against the wall of his cage; as if he were telling her _no_. But, Kolvaldr wouldn't kill her. He couldn't. Not without breaking the bond between her and Loki. And that would set Loki free.

"Lady Sigyn," Kolvaldr said, still grinning savagely. "In Asgard, you may choose a champion to fight for you, but this is Jotunheim. You must face me yourself."

"I am aware of the law of my own realm," Sigyn replied.

"Very well. I shall choose the time and place --"

"That is not your right," Brisenndyr cut in. "Not anymore."

"Be silent, half-breed. _I_ am the challenged, and by jotun law, I choose."

"Queen Sigyn and King Loki are bound by the alfin magic _you_ invoked," Brisenndyr said. "Therefore..." Brisenndyr gestured toward Sigyn, "Her Majesty remains the challenged."

Kolvaldr growled in displeasure, his lips curling back from his teeth.

"I stand with Princess Brisenndyr's judgment," Gauthild said.

"As do I," said Hroth, from where he stood guard next to Kolvaldr.

Startled, Sigyn looked up at him. It was the first time Hroth had ever spoken in her presence. The ettin nodded to her. The jotunar in the great hall gave their assent to Brisenndyr's point, alfin and ettin alike. Kolvaldr looked more and more displeased with each affirmation.

Sigyn's throat tightened, and her eyes blurred with tears, which she swiftly blinked away. She was grateful to them, for their loyalty to Loki, and to her. She glanced at Loki, frozen in his prison of dark red, rippling fire, his hands upraised to cast a spell, his face caught in an expression of narrow-eyed irritation.

Gauthild said, "Your Majesty, if I may advise you?"

"Certainly. I welcome your counsel, Gauthild," said Sigyn.

"Strictly following the law, you may not face the son of Kolfgnar until the moon Jotunjaldr is once more full in the northern sky, three nights hence. You must face him in the circle of combat, and before a proper tribunal."

Kolvaldr huffed another scornful laugh. "Three days more will not save you. Nor will they save the Jotunslayer."

"Then three days more should make no difference to you," Sigyn replied. "Gauthild, please escort our guest to the dungeon."

"It will be my pleasure, Majesty," Gauthild said.

***


	6. Chapter 6

Brisenndyr put her hands on her hips. "Your pardon, Majesty, but we should make haste. We must be away from the palace before we are missed."

Sigyn nodded to her. "I know. It's only…"

She gestured at the grimulf standing in the snow-dusted stable yard, massive, red-eyed; stinking of blood and meat. The grimulf stretched out its neck and wuffled at her, nostrils flaring, no doubt picking up Loki's scent from the coat Sigyn wore.

She had no riding leathers like Brisenndyr, and the only alfin boots she owned were soft, embroidered leather, lined with fur. She had not seen the need for any other sort of clothing, until now. She was not one for clandestine excursions, nor heroic adventures. Nor was she looking forward to riding a grimulf.

Luckily, she'd kept the clothing given to her at the SHIELD base: the long-sleeved green tunic and trousers, the plain white undergarments, and the black boots with the lacings and the ridged soles. The clothing was surprisingly comfortable, especially the boots.

"Ooskoo won't hurt you." Brisenndyr turned and spoke to the grimulf. "Ooskoo. Down."

The grimulf grunted and obediently knelt in the snow, extending one leg. Sigyn hesitated, her fingers automatically running across the knotted bracelet around her wrist. She felt nothing through it. No spark of magic, no sense of Loki.

Brisenndyr huffed impatiently. "Not half an hour ago, were you not explaining to me how you planned to kill yourself?"

"Only as an absolute last resort," Sigyn replied. "And I've no wish to end my life by being devoured by a grimulf."

Brisenndyr looked at the sky, and Sigyn followed her gaze. The night was ebbing toward a cloudy dawn. Sigyn didn't know whether Loki could still communicate with the Casket, or if somehow the Casket understood Loki had been challenged, but Sigyn anticipated there would be storms later in the day.

"If you would rather take a Chitauri flyer…" Brisenndyr said.

"No," Sigyn said quickly.

Brisenndyr stepped onto the grimulf's knee, grabbed a strap on the saddle, and then vaulted onto Ooskoo's back. She leaned down, holding out her hand to Sigyn. Frowning, Sigyn followed the alfin's example, setting her foot on Ooskoo's extended leg, which was as wide and steady as a stone stair. She grasped Brisenndyr's hand, and the alfin pulled her up; Sigyn scrambled inelegantly into the ettin-sized saddle, grateful she'd had the wit to wear her SHIELD clothing.

"Hold on to me," Brisenndyr said.

Sigyn immediately clamped her arms around the alfin's waist.

"Ooskoo," Brisenndyr called, "Up!"

Ooskoo snorted, and heaved himself up, much more smoothly than Sigyn would have expected, for an animal so large. Brisenndyr slapped the grimulf's side with a thin crop, and Ooskoo set off at a brisk, jouncing trot, his huge feet sending up sprays of snow. They passed quickly through the outbuildings of the palace, which lay in tumbled ruins.

The jotunar who dwelt in Utgard built their houses on the southern side of the palace, using its towering mass as a windbreak against the gales that swept down from the northern mountains. On the northern side of the palace, there was nothing except tundra spreading toward the distant mountains. The Vastlands, the home of the alfin. Loki's people.

After she had thought Loki dead, when her grief was not so new and raw, Sigyn had returned to Asgard, and searched the palace library, the largest in all the nine realms, for information about Jotunheim. There was nothing. Jotunheim had been a forbidden realm ever since Laufey's conquest. Either the Allfather had purged the palace library, or there never had been anything written about Jotunheim. Perhaps, to the Asgardians, Jotunheim had always been a realm of darkness and monsters.

Three of Jotunheim's moons gleamed palely on the western horizon. Jotunjaldr was not among them; it would not rise until tomorrow night, when she would face Kolvaldr in the circle of combat.

Brisenndyr urged Ooskoo to a canter, and they traveled swiftly north into the Vastlands. After several hours of riding, the sky had brightened to a cloudy haze, but thus far the weather had held clear. Ooskoo crested a gentle rise in the land, and on the far side of the hill, Sigyn spied an encampment of white, round-top yurts, ribbons of smoke rising from the holes in the center of their roofs. The alfin settlement blended almost invisibly with the snowy ground and the pale gray sky. The doors of the yurts all faced south, toward the palace, and away from the mountains, with their fierce, biting winds.

Grimulfs stood tethered outside the camp. They lifted their heads and roared as Ooskoo approached. Ooskoo bellowed back to them. Brisenndyr slowed him to a trot, then a walk. A party of four alfin came out to meet them, unarmed, walking in a relaxed, loose group. When they drew near, they all bowed, hands to hearts, and Brisenndyr reined Ooskoo to a halt.

The one walking in the lead, a tall female dressed in gray grimulf leathers similar to Brisenndyr's, hailed them with a lifted hand, and said, "Queen Sigyn, Keeper of Fire, and Princess Brisenndyr of Clan Brinjolf, Chosen of the Ancestors, we bid you welcome to Clan Kyrkrida."

Sigyn straightened in surprise. She had not asked, but she had assumed Brisenndyr would be taking her to meet the elders of Clan Brinjolf, Brisenndyr's _own_ clan.

"I am Skeia," continued the alfin. "Chieftain of Clan Kyrkrida."

Sigyn said, "I thank you for your welcome, Lady Skeia."

The alfin smiled slightly, probably at being referred to as a "lady," in Asgardian fashion, but her smile was friendly, rather than mocking. All the same, she and her clansmen seemed not entirely pleased to see Brisenndyr. Sigyn likened it to rivals from a battlefield meeting in a feasting hall, and vowing to keep the peace under their host's roof.

Brisenndyr pressed a hand to her heart, bowed from the saddle, and said, "Chieftain Skeia. Well met. We are expected, I see."

"The Eldest told us you would come, Chosen."

"Then you've heard."

Skeia nodded gravely. "Everyone has heard."

"Ooskoo," Brisenndyr said, "down."

The grimulf bobbed his head, shaking his reins, and then, with surprising grace, lowered himself to the ground, extending his left front foot. Sigyn realized that she would have to dismount the grimulf before Brisenndyr would be able to.

"Just swing your right leg over," Brisenndyr said, holding out a dangling loop of leather attached to the saddle. "Hold onto the strap, and slide down. It's not far."

It wasn't far. Not very. But, she hesitated long enough that two of Skeia's soldiers hurried to Ooskoo's side to help her down. Ooskoo snorted in displeasure and shuffled sideways, until Brisenndyr hissed a sharp command and halted him. Embarrassed, Sigyn let the two soldiers lift her from Ooskoo's back, and hand her to the ground. Her numb, stiff muscles didn't support her for a moment or two. She wobbled like a newborn fawn, then caught her balance, a rush of pins and needles going through her legs, and she stepped away from the two soldiers.

Sigyn gave them a wry smile. "Thank you."

The soldiers exchanged a glance, and then they both bowed to her again. Belatedly, it occurred to Sigyn that they might never have seen anyone who was not alfin or ettin. The Midgardian science teams had not ventured beyond Utgard, and the Chitauri had not encroached far past it, either.

Brisenndyr slid gracefully from Ooskoo's back and alighted on the ground. She stamped her feet, getting the circulation back in her legs, and then she scooped up Ooskoo's dangling reins. To Sigyn's surprise, the grimulf clumped after Brisenndyr through the snow, following her calmly, sniffing at the ground here and there, at the tracks of other grimulfs in the snow, his massive head swinging this way and that, though never far enough to yank the reins out of Brisenndyr's hand.

"Ooskoo seems devoted to you," Sigyn said.

Brisenndyr smiled. "I raised him from a calf. He's a good boy. Smart. Aren't you, Ooskoo?"

Ooskoo snuffled and rumbled.

It felt good to stretch her legs, and the walk to the camp was not a long one. The smells of smoke and cooking meat and the musk, earthy smell of grimulfs greeted them as they reached the cluster of yurts. Children peeked shyly from the door flaps of yurts, and a long-legged creature with a snowy white pelt lay sunning itself, stretched out in front of the doorway of one yurt. Brisenndyr patted Ooskoo and then handed the grimulf's reins to one of Skeia's soldiers. Skeia led them through the camp to a yurt in the middle, no different from the others. She stopped, and gestured to the door of the yurt, which was covered in a flap of heavy fabric, elaborately embroidered with designs in red and black and gold.

"You may go in, both of you. The Eldest already knows you are here."

Brisenndyr nodded to Skeia. "My thanks for the hospitality of Clan Kyrkrida."

"I would be a fool if I did not grant it, given the present circumstances," Skeia replied with cool formality, but then she seemed to relent a little. "You are welcome here, both of you, as long as you wish to stay."

She gave both Brisenndyr and Sigyn a brisk bow, then turned and walked away, leaving them in front of the yurt.

"Majesty," Brisenndyr said, "I know Asgardians are bound by their oaths. Once given, they are unbreakable. Is that also true of the Vanir?"

It was Sigyn's turn to frown. "What is it you ask of me, Brisenndyr?"

"I must have your word you will not speak about the Eldest to anyone. Not that we traveled here to see the Eldest, not anything about the Eldest living among Clan Kyrkrida, nor anything we speak of with the Eldest. Not one word. You must never speak of it to anyone, not even His Majesty."

"You still fear Loki will betray you? He has little love for Asgard, and no desire to return. And I have no reason to betray you at all."

Brisenndyr shook her head. "I am loyal to my king. And to my queen." She laid her hand on Sigyn's arm. "You both have earned my loyalty. You are worthy friends. I do not believe either one of you would betray the alfin. Not on purpose."

"Ah," Sigyn said.

"The ceremony that bound you to King Loki is a very old secret of the alfin clans. We would never give it to the ettin. Yet, it was stolen, by Kolvaldr Kolfgnarson. A word, one single word, spoken in the hearing of someone, and perhaps innocently repeated…" Brisenndyr spread her hands.

Sigyn did not like keeping secrets, and she was especially loath to keep one from Loki, but she understood Brisenndyr's point. "You have my solemn oath I will not speak a word of this, not even to Loki."

"Thank you," said Brisenndyr.

She lifted the door flap of the yurt for Sigyn, and Sigyn ducked inside. Brisenndyr followed. Sigyn expected the inside to be smoky and dark, but it was neither. The roof flaps surrounding the smoke hole at the top had been furled back, letting the hazy gray morning sunlight stream down through the ribs of the yurt, illuminating the interior in bars of light and shadow. The same hole drew the smoke from the fire straight upward, and out of the yurt. Carpets and pelts covered the floor, and cushions were piled around a low brazier.

The salty-earthy smell of burning peat rose in the smoke, and reminded her suddenly of her home, of the fires roaring in her father's hall while the winter rains drummed ceaselessly down the roof tiles.

Inside the door flap of the yurt, Brisenndyr sat on a low wooden stool, and began to pull off her boots. Sigyn sat down next to her, and did likewise. It was surprisingly warm inside the yurt. An alfin child came up to them, holding a tray with two metal cups. She bowed to them, and stared at Sigyn with huge, wondering eyes, and held out her tray.

Sigyn smiled at her, as she accepted one of the cups. Brisenndyr picked up the other one. The cup held a milky, pale yellow concoction.

Brisenndyr lifted her cup, and murmured to Sigyn, "Drink it slowly."

Sigyn took an experimental sip. It was creamy-thick, and she wasn't exactly sure what it tasted like, because it blazed a fiery streak down her throat, and made her nose burn and her head buzz. It was far stronger than mead or _skadrida,_ the clear liquor the ettin brewed from water-weed. A lingering tail of something sharp and bitter that was almost like citrus and clove remained, after the burning began to fade from her tongue. Sigyn's eyes watered, and she blinked rapidly.

Brisenndyr snorted softly. Apparently satisfied, the serving girl trotted away with the tray, before Sigyn could hand back her cup.

"Come and sit by my fire," came a voice, as ancient and cracked as Thistilbardi's, from the dimness of the yurt. "Be welcome."

On the far side of the smoking brazier sat an ancient being, almost lost among the dozens of furs that swathed her body. Sigyn realized she had been quite arrogantly mistaken in her assumption that Skeia's soldiers had never seen a person not native to Jotunheim. The person who had addressed Sigyn most definitely was not jotun.

In her stocking feet, Sigyn crossed the soft woolen carpets to the brazier. There was nothing written about Jotunheim in the palace library of Asgard, but much had been written about Dokkalfheim. The Eldest was a dokkalf, perhaps the very last living dokkalf. Her skin was inky blue-black, as was her long, glossy hair, which she wore in two massive plaits glittering with golden beads and small polished seashells. Her face was lined and creased with immense age, her eyes blank and clouded with cataracts. She was blind, Sigyn realized, with a shock of dismay.

Sigyn stood uncertainly, holding her warm cup in her hands.

The dokkalf stretched out her hand. "I bid you welcome, Majesty."

Sigyn stepped forward, and gently clasped the Eldest's hand in both of her own. "I am most glad to meet you, Eldest."

The dokkalf laughed. "Majesty, you may call me Nimlenwe, as no one has called me by my name for a very long time."

"If that is your wish," Sigyn replied, "Nimlenwe it shall be. Please call me Sigyn."

"Ah, such graciousness," Nimlenwe said with another light laugh.

As Sigyn stepped back, Brisenndyr approached the dokkalf, and knelt in front of her, bowing her head.

"Honored Eldest," Brisenndyr said. "We humbly beseech your council."

"Clan Brinjolf has oracles of its own, princess," Nimlenwe said gently, and laid her hand on Brisenndyr's bent head. "Why not bring your troubles to the skulls of your ancestors?"

Brisenndyr hesitated, confirming Sigyn's earlier impression that Clan Brinjolf and Clan Kyrkrida were not close allies. Possibly they were bitter enemies.

"Honored Eldest, our oracles cannot help me," Brisenndyr replied. "I don't wish to know my future."

"That is fortunate," said Nimlenwe, "since I cannot see the future."

Brisenndyr glanced up in surprise. As if sensing the gesture, or perhaps simply because Brisenndyr hadn't replied, Nimlenwe shrugged one shoulder.

"Rumors," she said. "Foolish tales."

"But," said Brisenndyr, "Chieftain Skeia said you knew the queen and I would come to Clan Kyrkrida."

"Because you were already on your way." Nimlenwe gestured toward the pile of cushions on the other side of the smoking brazier. "Sit down, please. You have come here to learn of the old magic that my people brought from Dokkalfheim. I will help you if I can."

Sigyn and Brisenndyr settled into the cushions on the carpeted floor.

"Now," said the Eldest. "Sigyn. Summon your Companion Fire for me."

Sigyn flinched in surprise. "Honored Eldest, I… I cannot. Not without causing my husband pain."

"He can bear it," Nimlenwe replied. "He has borne far worse."

"It is not…" Sigyn halted, realizing what Nimlenwe meant. "Could I kill him?"

"Certainly. But, I only require a glimpse. It is your fire that keeps him captive. I can tell you nothing, until you summon it for me." The dokkalf leaned forward on her couch, her silvery blind eyes seeming to peer all the way through Sigyn, into her most secret heart. "For your sake, he will endure it."

"Very well." Sigyn set the cup of milky liquor on the carpet near her knee.

Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, and reached down inside of herself for the Companion Fire. It was the first time since her wedding ceremony that she had done so. She felt it entwined with Loki's magic, the smoky, snowy green-goldness of him. He resisted her, the connection between the two of them shivering like a plucked harp string.

_Forgive me. I'm sorry, my love. I need your help._

He understood her. The resistance eased, and a sudden, stunning power surged through her, icy-fiery. She opened her eyes, to a column of dark red fire bursting from her cupped hands and roaring toward the smoke hole of the yurt. Brisenndyr scrambled away, shielding Nimlenwe behind her.

The column of fire did not ignite the yurt, nor did it touch Nimlenwe, or anything beyond Sigyn's hands. It burned furiously, spinning and writhing, and Sigyn felt Loki, the way she'd felt him on their wedding night. She felt his frustration and helpless rage. The Companion Fire burned him, and it burned her as well, searing and freezing, flaying her from the inside.

"Enough," said Nimlenwe.

Sigyn couldn't stop. She didn't want to. This was what it was to be Loki, propelled headlong on a course she knew would bring disaster, welcoming the inevitable chaos and wreckage, the splintering shock of freedom; twined in and around the pain was the sweet promise of oblivion, like the waiting arms of a lover.

Nimlenwe clapped her hands over Sigyn's. The contact between Sigyn and Loki snapped. Sigyn collapsed onto the carpet, her muscles unstrung and her head spinning. Blackness danced in front of her eyes.

"Sigyn!" Brisenndyr bent over Sigyn, laying a hand on her forehead. "Sigyn…"

"She will be all right," Nimlenwe said. It almost sounded like the dokkalf was laughing. "She only needs a moment to collect herself."

Sigyn's cheeks flushed with a combination of embarrassment and… fulfillment. Her heartbeat was swift and heavy, just beginning to slow, her body tingled, and an unmistakable heat and dampness gathered between her legs. _Loki. Curse you._

She reached up weakly, and brushed Brisenndyr's hand away. "I am fine."

Brisenndyr looked unconvinced, but sat back, allowing Sigyn to sit up. Sigyn ran her fingers through her hair. Her curls must look as wild as if Loki had thrust his hands into them. She cast her mind along the connection between them, but it was as if she were feeling her way through a dark tunnel. She could no longer sense Loki.

"Have you learned anything useful?" Brisenndyr asked Nimlenwe sharply.

"Oh, much," said the dokkalf, raising her eyebrows. To Sigyn, she said, "Your night visitor may have the answer. Laufey's consort, I mean."

Out of the corner of her eye, Sigyn saw Brisenndyr's head snap around, from Nimlenwe to Sigyn.

Nimlenwe added, "The Casket of Ancient Winters is the source of your husband's power, just as the Companion Fire is the source of yours. The magic that binds Loki is a simple enough spell. Simple enough even for an ettin to master." Nimlenwe paused to gaze beyond Sigyn and Brisenndyr. "Loki cannot unite the sources of your power. Therefore, you must."

"But, I cannot touch the Casket. It will kill me."

"Perhaps," said Nimlenwe.

Sigyn clenched her teeth in frustration. She was not normally so impatient; she could lay the blame for that upon Loki, as well.

"It seems to me," Brisenndyr said, "that the Casket wouldn't harm the heir to the throne."

Sigyn scowled. "I am hardly the heir to anything, if Loki -- oh. _Oh._ "

"You and His Majesty have warmed the furs, I assume."

"Yes," Sigyn replied. The furs, the floor of the bathing chamber, and the couch, Loki's desk, a table in a dark and remote corner of the palace library, and several other locations Sigyn couldn't recall at the moment. She glanced at the Eldest. "Nimlenwe, am I with child?"

The Eldest tilted her head, giving Sigyn a sympathetic look. "If the knowledge is not in your mind, my dear, and if it is not known to anyone else, then I cannot know it. If your child is so small inside of you that it does not yet have a mind with which to perceive itself, then I cannot perceive it. But, the Casket's powers are far greater than mine."

Brisenndyr added, "It's your right to rule Jotunheim in your husband's place. That's reason enough for the Casket not to harm you."

"Isefrid was jotun," Sigyn protested, "and the Casket killed her. I am Vanir."

Brisenndyr said, "When His Majesty gave himself to the Casket, he was Asgardian, in his heart. He still thought of Jotunheim as his punishment."

"You're asking me to take a terrible risk."

"We are not asking anything of you," Nimlenwe replied. "You must ask yourself."

Sigyn sighed. "Very well. I thank you for your counsel, Honored Eldest."

Nimlenwe held up her hand. "I am not finished."

Sigyn pressed her lips together, and folded her hands in her lap.

The Eldest continued, "The spell that imprisons your husband is very old magic. Very dark. It is a pinhole in the fabric of our world. A parasite, compelled to exist here, instead of where it belongs."

Brisenndyr said, "Do you mean it's the same corruption that nearly destroyed all nine realms a year ago?"

Nimlenwe nodded. "There have always been spells to draw the darkness of the void into to our reality. Dangerous spells. This one feeds on the bond between you and Loki, which is why fighting the spell causes you both pain. The spell has little power of its own, but neither of you can unbind it."

Sigyn frowned. A parasite _compelled_ to exist outside the void did not sound to her like the ravening corruption that had devastated Kambrekk and Gislavotn. Yet, after Loki's return, Loki had told her it seemed to him that the darkness had been driven mad with the need to devour everything. Like Volstagg at a banquet table, Loki had added with brittle flippancy -- and he hadn't said much else. She hadn't pressed him for details.

Nimlenwe raised one bony finger, adding. "If Loki killed you and escaped his prison, he would still be burdened with the parasite. It would drain his magic just a little every day, every hour, feeding on him, until he is empty."

Sigyn's stomach plunged in dismay.

Brisenndyr voiced exactly what Sigyn was thinking, "If this spell can drain His Majesty, it can drain the Casket."

"Yes, very possibly," Nimlenwe said.

"Kolvaldr cannot have known that."

"Destroying the realm to rid it of Loki seems extravagant, even for Kolvaldr," Sigyn agreed. "But, Nimlenwe… Loki's skills in magic are far superior to my own. If he cannot break this spell, how can I possibly help him?"

"Jotunheim --" Nimlenwe replied, "-- _old_ Jotunheim as it was before your husband joined himself to the Casket -- is the oldest of all the Nine Realms, save Asgard. But, Asgard cannot intervene without bringing war. If this spell can be broken -- only the Casket can break it."

"Very well," said Sigyn.

She sat back on the cushions, then picked up the cup of milky liquor from the rug beside her knee, and drained it in one long swallow.


	7. Chapter 7

Standing in the snow, Sigyn looked southward. Clan Kyrkrida's encampment lay hours north of Utgard; she could see only the rolling white plains of the Vastlands, and a faint blue-lilac shadow of a mountain range that might have been the peaks of Aurmir. The milky liquor she'd drunk in Nimlenwe's yurt still burned in her stomach, and down the back of her throat. Her brain bobbed inside her skull, pleasantly warm and weightless. 

Sigyn closed her eyes. She traced her fingers over the bracelet Loki had made for her, and reached for him again. She felt nothing. Either that last rush of Loki's magic had destroyed the connection between them, or… Sigyn didn't want to think about what else Loki's silence might mean.

She glanced over her shoulder at the hanging door flap of the yurt. The Eldest had asked Sigyn to step outside, while she spoke with Brisenndyr alone. An unusual request to make of the queen of Jotunheim, but Sigyn was well aware she was an interloper here among the alfin.

Footsteps approached through the snow. Ooskoo's heavy tread, and the lighter steps of an alfin. It was Skeia, the clan chieftain, leading the grimulf by his reins. Skeia raised a hand in greeting, and Ooskoo snorted and bobbed his gigantic head, white steam furling from his nostrils.

"Majesty." Skeia gave an uncertain bow, then glanced toward the yurt, where Brisenndyr had yet to emerge.

Sigyn shrugged, and smiled. "I was asked to wait here, by the Honored Eldest."

Skeia raised an eyebrow in surprise. "I trust you have not been kept waiting long."

"No, not long at all." Sigyn's mother had taught Sigyn better manners than to let a conversation with a new acquaintance lapse into uncomfortable silence, and so Sigyn added, "Chieftain Skeia, I hope you do not think me presumptuous, but how did Clan Kyrkrida come to be the guardian of the Honored Eldest?"

Skeia smiled wryly. "Curious that the queen of Jotunheim would be concerned about offending me."

"I've no wish to offend anyone. My presence is already offensive enough to some."

Skeia laughed. "Some say Brisenndyr should have been queen, as she is Chosen of her people. Some say His Majesty should not have taken a queen, that wedding you proves that he still craves Asgard's favor."

"And what do you say, Chieftain Skeia of Clan Kyrkrida?"

"There are flowers blooming in the southern lands. Flowers haven't bloomed in Jotunheim since the time of King Svarang and Queen Eslif. Tens of thousands of years ago. Many thought King Loki heartless, but none can deny now that he loves his queen."

Sigyn glanced away, feeling herself blush. She knew which flowers Skeia meant: the huge, extravagant white blossoms set in stone vases all throughout the Queen's Chambers. White petals with a breath of blue and gray at their edges, hearts streaked by deep cerulean and violet.

Skeia added, "When Laufey ruled Jotunheim, other alfin clans would raid the ettin towns and caravans, kill Laufey's soldiers, and be killed in their turn. Clan Kyrkrida kept to itself. We only sent scouting parties into Utgard to steal away an alfin babe left to die. One night, my ancestors discovered not a babe, but a dokkalf. Very old, and all but dead from the cold." Skeia shrugged. "Not a very interesting tale."

"On the contrary," Sigyn said. "Laufey kept the Eldest all that time. For her powers of sight, I assume."

"Many of the dokkalf had strange powers," Skeia replied. "The Honored Eldest has survived the longest, that is all."

Sigyn nodded. What had Nimlenwe had seen, that had displeased Laufey enough for him to finally condemn her to death? She didn't ask; it felt too much like prying. Perhaps Nimlenwe had seen Isefrid wasn't worthy of touching the Casket.

Skeia turned to Ooskoo, and patted the grimulf's warty flank. "Clan Brinjolf breeds fine stock."

With an embarrassed laugh, Sigyn admitted, "Grimulfs all look very much the same to me."

"You will learn," Skeia said. "Given time."

Sigyn could not help studying Skeia's face, comparing Skeia's markings to Loki's, as she did with every alfin she met. The differences were subtle, but she always seemed to find them. Loki had three small, curving lines on his temples, almost hidden in his hair. Skeia's temples were marked by concentric semi-circles.

Skeia said, "Jotunheim prospers. The king wants to make us a power again, among the Nine Realms. That is what his father wanted, too"

"Laufey wanted conquest," Sigyn pointed out. "Loki wants progress."

"Power. It is always about power."

Sigyn could not argue with that.

The door flap of the yurt flew open with a snap and a thump of heavy fabric. Brisenndyr came striding out, her face tight with fury.

Brisenndyr snatched Ooskoo's reins out of Skeia's hand. "We must leave immediately,"

Skeia was too startled to protest; she stepped hastily out of Brisenndyr's path. Ooskoo threw his head back and snorted in alarm.

"Ooskoo!" Brisenndyr snarled. "Down!"

The grimulf moaned and backed away, eyes wide. Ooskoo was at least three times Brisenndyr's size; Sigyn felt a pang of sympathy for the poor grimulf.

Brisenndyr clapped her hands. "Ooskoo! Bad! Down!"

"Stop it," Sigyn caught Brisenndyr's arm. "Brisenndyr, you're scaring him."

Brisenndyr glared at her, then took a deep breath through her nose. "Majesty..." she began, in the low and overly enunciated voice of someone trying very hard not to scream with rage.

Sigyn walked away from her, and toward Ooskoo.

"Don't!" Brisenndyr said, this time unmistakably alarmed, at the same time that Skeia said,

"Majesty!"

"Be silent," Sigyn said. "Both of you."

Either of the alfin would be better suited to calming the skittish grimulf, but Sigyn advanced on Ooskoo with slow, cautious steps. Ooskoo swung his head to get a better look at her, his massive horns sweeping the air dangerously close to her head.

"Ooskoo," she coaxed, holding out her hand. "It's all right. Come here."

Ooskoo thrust his head forward, so swiftly that Sigyn had no chance to evade him. His nose struck her in the chest, and knocked her over. She tumbled into the snow, more surprised than hurt. A wave of hot, meat-smelling breath rolled over Sigyn, as Ooskoo snuffled at her, picking up Loki's scent on her coat. Then Ooskoo made that miserable, bawling noise again. Sigyn knew exactly how the grimulf felt. She missed Loki, too.

Brisenndyr came crunching through the snow toward them. "Ooskoo," she said in a calmer voice. "Get away from her, you stupid thing."

Skeia scooped up the grimulf's dangling reins. "Majesty, are you injured?"

"No," Sigyn replied. Her ribcage ached, and she'd likely have a bruise before long, but it was nothing dire. "I am fine."

Brisenndyr held out a hand to Sigyn. Her face was icy calm. She held her anger under control like a stone in her clenched fist. Sigyn knew that sort of look; of course she did.

Sigyn clasped Brisenndyr's hand, and let the alfin pull her to her feet. She dusted the snow off her clothing. Ooskoo turned toward Brisenndyr, and made a low, miserable sound. Brisenndyr rubbed him on the nose.

With Skeia standing nearby, Sigyn refrained from asking Brisenndyr what had occurred between her and the Eldest. Brisenndyr extended her hand to Skeia. Surprise flitted across Skeia's face, and then she accepted the gesture, and clasped hands with Brisenndyr. The hand clasp was brief, and neither said anything. Instead, Brisenndyr nodded, then turned to Ooskoo.

"Ooskoo," she said. "Down."

This time, Ooskoo obeyed, extending one leg and kneeling in the snow. Brisenndyr stepped up on Ooskoo's leg, and sprang into the saddle, then reached down for Sigyn to clasp her hand. She pulled Sigyn up behind her.

"My thanks," Sigyn said to Skeia, once she was settled in Ooskoo's saddle, because she felt as though someone ought to say something. "Clan Kyrkrida has been most welcoming."

Skeia bowed to her, and smiled in a way that was both cynical and sweet. "It was my honor, Majesty."

"Ooskoo," Brisenndyr said. "Up."

They rode toward Utgard. Brisenndyr kept the grimulf to a brisk pace, and Ooskoo seemed happy to stretch his legs. The morning was bright, though the sky was swathed in clouds. As the jagged outermost walls of Utgard appeared above the horizon, Brisenndyr slowed Ooskoo to a walk.

"Brisenndyr…" Sigyn said.

The alfin shook her head. "Please. I cannot, Majesty. Do not compel me to tell you."

"If there is something I can do to help you, I shall do it."

"No," she said. "There is nothing."

"Not as your queen, then. As your friend."

Brisenndyr sighed. Sigyn was certain she wouldn't reply, but Brisenndyr said, in an uncharacteristically quiet tone, "You may do something for me."

"Name it," Sigyn said.

"When we return to the palace, go to the great hall, and touch the Casket. Immediately."

Sigyn stiffened in surprise.

"You must free the king as soon as possible," Brisenndyr added.

"I don't even know if I _can_ free Loki."

"Well, you must try," Brisenndyr replied, more of her customary curtness returning to her tone. "You cannot defeat Kolvaldr in combat."She half-turned in the saddle, to look at Sigyn over her shoulder. "Not unless you've a hidden talent that you neglected to mention."

"Alas, no," said Sigyn. "But, never mind me. The moment Kolvaldr takes the throne, Asgard will bring war. Loki may deny it all he likes, but his family loves him."

It wouldn't merely be war between Jotunheim and Asgard, either. It would be Jotunheim standing against the armies of both Asgard and Midgard. Perhaps even the forces of Nidavellir, since that realm now had a keen interest in Jotunheim's mineral assets.

Kolvaldr would not surrender. To do so would be the same as admitting Loki's treaties and trade agreements and sweeping changes were the proper path for Jotunheim. That an _Asgardian_ knew what was best for Jotunheim. None of the alfin would follow Kolvaldr. Some of the ettin might even stand against him. It would mean civil war once again, tearing apart a realm that had only just begun to heal.

Brisenndyr said, "If necessary, I shall kill the son of Kolfgnar myself. I swear it, Majesty."

"We have until tonight," Sigyn said, knowing that wasn't true. They _might_ have until nightfall, if Heimdall's all-seeing gaze did not fall upon Jotunheim before then.

"We cannot wait," Brisenndyr said, as if her thoughts were the same as Sigyn's.

Sigyn was no warrior, no fighter. She was not even very brave. But, Brisenndyr was correct. Even if Casket killed her, to die trying was better than to do nothing.

She had stolen away with Brisenndyr in the darkness before dawn, and she had told no one. By the time they returned to the palace, it was nearly midday. They had been missed. She expected she would be, but she was past caring.

The first person to met them in the palace halls was Breyrkekolf. He came striding toward them quickly, his brow furrowed with concern. "Majesty! At last. I was told you had left the palace."

"Do you presume to question me?" Sigyn said, in her haughtiest and most Loki-esque tone.

Breyrkekolf halted, blinking in surprise. "No, Majesty, but the royal council --"

He broke off as Brisenndyr sprang at him with a snarl, her ice blade slashing at his throat. Breyrkekolf staggered back, flinging up an arm to block his sister's attack. Her blade cut through the thick wool of his coat, scoring a long cut down the underside of his arm. Blood poured down the front of his coat.

"Brisenndyr!" Sigyn cried. "Have you gone mad?"

Brisenndyr hooked a leg behind her brother's feet, and flung him to the stone floor of the hallway. It was on the tip of Sigyn's tongue to call for the guards, but something stopped her: Breyrkekolf was not fighting back. He was barely defending himself. Sigyn darted forward, too late to stop Brisenndyr as she plunged her ice blade into Breyrkekolf's shoulder. Breyrkekolf grunted in pain, Sigyn grabbed hold of Brisenndyr's arm as Brisenndyr swung the blade up once more.

"Stop it! He's your _brother_!"

Brisenndyr's ice blade flashed across Sigyn's vision. A bright, hot sting of pain as the edge of the blade cut her cheek. Blood blossomed in the cut and slid down her cheek like sticky tears. Brisenndyr spun around, horrified.

"Sigyn!" she exclaimed. "Majesty -- forgive me, but you must let me kill him!"

Sigyn pressed the sleeve of Loki's borrowed coat against her cut cheek. "Enough, Brisenndyr."

Breyrkekolf rolled onto his side, cradling his injured arm with his other hand, looking up at Sigyn with an expression that was half defiant and half regretful. He'd made no attempt to flee.

Sigyn said to him, "Tell me. What is it you have done?"

She suspected she already knew. She could not quite make herself believe it.

"He has betrayed us all." Brisenndyr answered for him. "And he has doomed Jotunheim." She turned on her brother. "You slinking, cowardly, traitorous filth!"

Breyrkekolf answered with remarkable calm, as if he had already resigned himself to die, "Sister, _you_ should have been queen. Not an outsider."

"I trusted you," Sigyn said quietly. "Why have you done this?"

"Lady Sigyn, I am fond of you," Breyrkekolf said. "Do not mistake me. I bear you no enmity, but by right of blood and our oracles, my sister should rule Jotunheim by King Loki's side."

"You idiot," Brisenndyr said. "Do you truly think I would have been content as a Keeper of Fire? To speak sweetly to His Majesty, to smile at him, and to soothe him when his moods turn dark?"

She finished with a scornful noise. Sigyn was more amused than offended by this encapsulation of her queenly duties.

"You desire the king," Breyrkekolf said. "You told me so."

"Yes," Brisenndyr answered readily. "And I love him. But, you don't know me at all, if you think I have the patience to stay wedded to him."

Sigyn laughed, in spite of herself. Brisenndyr shot her a rueful glance, then drew back her foot and kicked Breyrkekolf in the stomach -- not as hard as she might have. Breyrkekolf grunted in pain, then held up his uninjured hand, as if to placate Brisenndyr.

He said, "Gauthild's spies have watched the sons of Kolfgnar for a long while. I have only coaxed Kolfjollmarr and Kolvaldr into challenging King Loki, rather than lurking in the shadows." When Brisenndyr did not attack him, Breyrkekolf sat up slowly, adding, "I am loyal to our king, sister. His Majesty can defeat Kolvaldr easily."

Sigyn shook her head. "Loki and I are bound together. He cannot free himself without killing me."

"You're barely able to summon the Companion Fire," Breyrkekolf said. "Your wedding ceremony was only that. A ceremony, and pretty lights." He pressed his hand to his heart. "Lady Sigyn, I assure you, I have no wish to endanger you. Your bond with His Majesty is but a cobweb, easily broken. You may free yourself and him, any time you wish."

"It cannot be so simple," Sigyn said.

"I assure you it is."

Brisenndyr looked from her brother to Sigyn, her brows drawing together.

Breyrkekolf continued, "When two alfin marry, they are bound until death. The first time they join their bodies on the furs, their spirits are joined at the same moment."

Sigyn pressed her lips together. Breyrkekolf trailed off, realization and dismay spreading across his face.

"No," he said. "That is not possible."

He stumbled clumsily to his feet. His skin looked gray; he had lost quite a lot of blood. Brisenndyr tensed, the ice-dagger formed in her right hand again, but she didn't move toward her brother.

Breyrkekolf said to Sigyn, "You are Vanir. You have no alfin blood."

Sigyn pressed her fingers to her forehead, where a headache had begun to pulse in time with the pain from her slashed cheek.

" _I concocted a potion for you,"_ Loki had told her weeks ago. _"Blood magic. My blood, I mean. A few odds and ends from my workshop, and one ingredient forbidden in Asgard."_ A potion she had swallowed in a glass of mead. Likely no more than a drop or two of Loki's blood, but it had been enough.

Brisenndyr said, "Brother, you have done everything except lay a cushion under Kolvaldr's ass," Brisenndyr said, "so King Loki's throne will be comfortable for him, while he watches his soldiers slaughter our people."

To Breyrkekolf's credit, he didn't continue to insist that he'd meant no harm, or that he'd done it for his sister. Sigyn didn't want to feel sorry for him, but he looked so genuinely stricken, she couldn't help herself.

She raised her hands, and clapped sharply, twice. "Guards."

The stone throat of the hallway carried her voice. Immediately, swift, running footsteps approached, and soon afterward, Hroth and Svardir appeared in answer to her summons.

"My Lady," Breyrkekolf murmured "I will help you, if I can."

There was nothing Sigyn could say to that. "Brisenndyr, see that your brother is secured in the dungeon."

Brisenndyr, looking as heartsick as her brother, only nodded. But, as Sigyn turned to go, Brisenndyr halted her with a hand on her arm. "Sigyn."

"No, you were right," Sigyn said. "We have no more time. I must go now."

"I wish you good luck."

Sigyn smiled. "My thanks, Brisenndyr."

They clasped hands, and then Sigyn headed down the corridor at a swift walk. The great hall was unguarded. It must have been Hroth and Svardir assigned to that duty. However, it wouldn't remain so for long. Her chance was now.

Loki stood frozen in his prison of dark crimson fire, one hand upraised to cast a spell, his eyes narrowed in concentration. Sigyn forced herself to pass him without hesitating. She'd felt nothing of him at all, since that last moment when he'd poured his magic through her. If she couldn't sense him, he couldn't sense her. He wouldn't know what she intended to do. She hoped he wouldn't know.

Sigyn focused on the colonnade at the far end of the great hall, at the gray clouds massing above the courtyard. There was not a breath of the bitter wind that tended to rise whenever Loki's mood turned dark. Perhaps he could still command the Casket from within his prison. Perhaps the Casket was somehow imprisoned with him. It looked no different to Sigyn. Its blue-white light coruscated and pulsed, endlessly, restlessly in motion.

If the Casket killed her, at least it would kill her quickly. It had slain Kolfjollmarr within moments. She reached for the Casket, then abruptly, her hand flinched away.

_ Loki.  _ He could not be strong enough to compel her against her will. Not yet. She fervently hoped he was not. As she focused her will and forced her way through his magic, pain blossomed like a black flower inside of her head, and invisible chains lashed tight around her.

_ I'm sorry,  _ she thought. _I'm so sorry, my love._

Sigyn thrust out her hand, and brought it down on the Casket. Blue-white light filled her vision. Cold pierced her skin with a thousand needles, turned her bones to icicles, and suffused every atom of her. Dancing light lifted her until she no longer felt the glassy surface of the Casket under her fingers, nor the floor underneath her feet, nor the vastness of the great hall around her, and the Casket's song twined around her. It song was not sweet and pure as she'd imagined, but instead a lyrical melding of dark and bright. Of Loki and Jotunheim.

She sensed no malice or anger from its arctic embrace; only curiosity. The Casket didn't mean to harm her. Perhaps it hadn't intended to harm Isefrid, or even Kolfjollmarr. Well… no. It had definitely meant to kill Kolfjollmarr. The black burn of frostbite on Loki's arm confirmed that. But Isefrid's death might have been a tragic mistake.

The Casket's interest illuminated something inside of Sigyn's with a sudden flare: part of her that was not entirely her... a child. Loki's child. Instinctively, Sigyn moved her hands to protect her belly, even as she recognized the gesture as pointless. Her fingers brushed Loki's bracelet and it woke, sparking with power. Magic illuminated the grimulf tooth and the knotted silk cords, a smoky green-gold light mingling with the formless white that surrounded her. The Casket's song shifted in response. _Recognize. Friend._ Whether her, or Loki, she had no idea.

The Casket obviously understood her, in some way of its own more efficient than language. Its reply took shape in Sigyn's mind: herself, reflected back to her, overlaid with an impression both of color and of sound, that she belonged to Loki, and therefore to the Casket itself.

Loki spoke aloud to The Casket sometimes, as he might speak to a large, devoted pet, but his mind was linked to it. Hers was not.

_ Please.  _ She addressed the Casket, or tried to. _I need your help._

Its light and song shifted again: _Lokifriendqueen-ask._

She gathered her thoughts, to explain to the Casket what Nimlenwe had said about the darkness, about the binding spell, but the Casket answered immediately.

_ Lokifriendqueen-understand-cooperate. _

_ Thank you, _ Sigyn replied.

Pleasure and eagerness shimmered in reply.

_ Hunt,  _ it told her. _Lokifriendqueen-wait._ But, almost immediately, it flickered hesitation and uncertainty at her, adding, _Lokifriendqueen-spelldarkness-found-frightened._

_ You are frightened?  _ Sigyn asked.

The answer was pure Loki bravado. The Casket feared nothing. It explained, _Spelldarkness-frightened-alone._ Impressions cascaded swiftly over Sigyn: reptilian aliens, dark and rocky ground, towers of black metal, swirls of stellar gas in a black sky; pain and loneliness and despair. Loki's time among the Chitauri. It could be nothing else.

_ Why do you show me this now? _ she asked.

_ Spelldarkness, _ the Casket replied, as if that ought to be obvious. _Lokifriendqueen-ask. Spelldarkness-catch-bring?_

_ Yes,  _ Sigyn replied, still not understanding. _Bring it to me, please._

_ Understand. Lokifriendqueen-wait. _

The darkness Sigyn had first sensed in The Casket's song, now rose through the scintillating blue-whiteness, in a formless ribbon of smoke. It swiftly took shape: a ghost trapped in the Casket. It was Loki. Not her husband, and not Loki as he had been in Asgard. This Loki had skin not merely pale, but dead, grayish white, and spider-webbed with thin black lines, as if it were white marble that had cracked and weathered.

The Casket's silver-azure light twisted around Loki, restraining him. He was terribly thin, his ribs pressing against his chest, his cheekbones so pronounced that his face looked skull-like. His eyes were not her husband's garnet eyes, nor were they the blue eyes she remembered. This Loki's eyes were black entirely, without iris or pupil.

What was it Loki had said to her before stepping into Erik Selvig's machine? Darcy had told Loki to warn Sigyn that he had left his shadow behind him. Darcy had also told Loki he would forget. Which, of course, he had; he'd never mentioned the subject to Sigyn again.

But, Sigyn understood now. The binding spell was a torn-away scrap of the corruption that had nearly destroyed the nine realms a year ago. Alone. Afraid. Forced to exist where it did not belong, eating away Loki's power to survive.

She reached out to touch Loki's black-eyed shadow.

_ How can I free you?  _ she asked. _How can I bring you home?_

Loki shrank from her touch, his eyes widening.

The Casket answered. The Bifrost had carried both Loki and his shadow back to Jotunheim, when Selvig's machine had not been able to find them. Darkness was nothing more than another color, another note in the song of reality. But, the binding spell woven by Kolvaldr had trapped this fragment of corruption inside the Casket, where it did not belong.

_ Lokifriendqueen-spelldarkness-bringwith,  _ the Casket told her.

It set Loki free at the same moment, the ropes of frost unwinding from his limbs. Loki tensed to flee, and Sigyn caught him, holding him tight in her arms.

_ Stop,  _ she told him. _Stop fighting me, please. I want to help you._

It should have been easy for Loki to throw off her hold, but he could not. Instead, he changed form, transforming into a gigantic serpent, sleek and wriggling with green and gold scales, one slit-pupilled yellow eye glaring into Sigyn's. The snake's mouth opened, baring fangs. Her Loki had never hurt her, would never hurt her, but _this_ Loki? He very well might. Sigyn tightened her hold around him.

Ice gripped her at the same time, stealing her breath, and digging deep into her flesh. In her arms, Loki changed from a snake into a bear; Sigyn's hands sank into wiry dark fur, and the stink of blood and animal musk surrounded her. Teeth sank into her flesh, but she felt the pain only dimly in the midst of the numbing cold.

_ Lokifriendqueen-return. _

Maddened with fear, Loki shrank into a rat. She almost lost hold of him, but clamped her stiff, cramping hands tight around the rodent's body. Loki became a fish, slick and wriggling, as a blue-white maelstrom whirled around her. In the midst of the storm, Loki became a moth, tiny wings beating frantically between her palms.

Abruptly, the snow and wind were gone. Sigyn staggered as the stones of the great hall materialized under her feet, and awareness of her body returned to her. Violent shivers shook her, sparks of pain crackled across her skin, and her legs buckled. She collapsed to the floor, curling her body to protect the child inside her. 

Loki burst from her nerveless hands. In the air, he transformed into a magpie. His illusion disintegrated, and he collapsed to the floor beside her, naked and trembling, his dark hair hanging in knots and tangles around his face. He shot a wild-eyed, startled look around the great hall, and then his fathomless black gaze focused on her face.

Whatever it was he meant to do now, Sigyn had no strength left to resist him. She felt as though she would never be warm again, except for the grimulf-tooth bracelet, a line of fire encircling her wrist. Loki's white fingers closed around her wrist, around her grimulf-tooth bracelet, but gently. With a near-silent sigh, his shape flew apart into black smoke, and he was gone. He was free.

Sigyn's eyes closed, and a blackness of her own swept her under.

*** 


	8. Chapter 8

The world returned in bits and pieces. First, Sigyn became aware that one side of her was no longer cold. Warmth radiated into her from a surface both soft and solid. She felt herself gently swaying, as if she were in a boat. Her eyelids felt swollen and sticky. Light pierced underneath them as she lifted her lashes. Violet. Designs worked in black thread across it. Loki's coat. He was carrying her in his arms.

Sigyn moved her head slightly, and pain stabbed her from her left eye socket to the base of her skull, and she gasped. Loki's arm tightened under her shoulders, but he said nothing to her. Glancing past his shoulder, she saw Hroth's worried face, and above that, a pale, pearlescent ceiling. The Queen's Chamber.

Loki bent, and laid her on Isefrid's bed. Straightening, he turned to Hroth and said, with an undercurrent of cold menace, "Leave. I will deal with you and Svardir later."

Hroth backed away and bowed, pressing his hand to his heart.

"Wait." Sigyn tried to sit up, blinking furiously as black stars exploded at the corners of her vision. She fell back against the pillows. "Loki --"

 _"Leave,"_ Loki repeated.

Hroth retreated quickly. Loki waited until Hroth had shut the door of the queen's bedchamber, with a very quiet click, and then he turned on Sigyn.

Sigyn spoke first: "Hroth and Svardir were only doing what I asked them to do."

"I gave Hroth a command," Loki said through his teeth. "One command. To protect you."

"And I gave Hroth and Svardir a command that contradicted yours. Not that they knew it at the time." Again, she struggled to sit up, and this time she succeeded, even though Isefrid's bed chamber swooped and fluttered around her, flickering from white to gray. A shiver raced through her, and she squeezed her eyes shut. She opened them again, in time to see Loki's hands become fists. "Why did you bring me here?"

"Because these chambers are yours," he said tightly. "You need rest, and quiet."

"Isefrid --"

"Has never appeared to you before dark, and there are hours yet 'til nightfall."

Sigyn gasped, twisting around to look out the windows. A sharp spike of pain went through her head at the abrupt movement. all she saw outside the windows was the cloudy gray, daylit sky. She had forgotten she had challenged Kolvaldr. Utterly and completely forgotten.

"What day is it?"

"You've already done exactly what Isefrid wanted you to do," he continued savagely. "Why should she trouble you further?" He scooped up a pale-blue glass pitcher from the spidery-legged table next to Isefrid's bed.

Sigyn understood exactly why he was upset. "Loki. Stop."

Pivoting toward the door, he hurled the pitcher. It exploded against the stone wall.

Sigyn shot to her feet; never mind how the floor wobbled underneath her. "Loki! Tell me what day it is!"

He rounded on her; he still looked furious, but at least now she had his attention. She let herself drop back onto the bed, her heart pounding in her ears. She clenched her fingers in the pale furs, tensing all of her muscles to keep herself sitting upright.

His body went as still as the carving of him in the valley wall outside the palace, his expression turning inscrutable.

"I've challenged Kolvaldr," she said.

"Have you now," he said flatly.

"I-I needed time to figure out how to free you."

"My dear heart." He addressed her as he might to a small and not very bright child. "If you challenged Kolvaldr, then he is the challenged party, not you."

" _We_ are the challenged party. A technicality the royal council forced Kolvaldr to accept, since it was our wedding bond he used to imprison you."

"Jotunjaldr rises full tonight."

She ran her hands through her hair, pushing her tangled curls back from her face. Relief swept a shaky rush all through her. What jotun law had to say about a combatant who failed to show up for a royal challenge, she did not know, and she did not care to discover.

He added, "I shall kill Kolvaldr, and be done with it."

"I doubt Kolvaldr will accept a second technicality," Sigyn replied. "Nor will your council. Kolvaldr has already defeated you. Technically."

Loki flared his nostrils and blew out an exasperated breath.

Sigyn lifted one hand, palm upward in a shrug.

"No," he said. "I absolutely forbid it. You cannot hope to defeat Kolvaldr."

Loki was correct, but his offhand dismissal stung her pride, all the same. "I _might._ I rescued you, didn't I?"

A muscle in his jaw jumped. "It was I who found you, Sigyn. On the floor."

He caught her hand, and held it up in her line of vision. For the first time, Sigyn saw the faint traceries of blue upon her skin, shadows of the ridged markings that covered Loki. Her breath caught.

"The Casket should have killed you, Sigyn. Why did it not kill you?"

She hesitated. Loki's face took on a watchful tautness, as if he were bracing himself for a lie. But, she couldn't tell him about the Eldest. She'd given Brisenndyr her word. Evidently, she'd kept silent too long. His expression hardened.

He let go of her hand, saying, "And now Hroth tells me he and Svardir left the great hall unguarded, because you commanded them to take Breyrkekolf to the dungeon."

"Breyrkekolf betrayed you," Sigyn said. "But, Loki, he didn't mean to. Or, at least… he didn't mean for things to turn out the way they did…"

Loki uttered a grim laugh that, even cold as she was, still chilled her. It was not just that he'd discovered her lying senseless on the floor of the great hall. There was something else he hadn't told her. Something worse.

"I suppose now you will ask me not to punish Breyrkekolf either," he said.

"Not for my sake, certainly," Sigyn replied warily. "Breyrkekolf only did what he thought best."

"Yes. I suppose he did."

"Loki," she said. "What's happened?"

To Sigyn's surprise, he knelt down in front of her, and took her hands in his own. Sigyn's heart plummeted. A memory was still too fresh in her mind: Thor gripping her hands in his large, calloused ones and saying to her, _Sigyn, you must be brave._

In a gentle, careful voice, Loki told her, "Breyrkekolf took his own life, almost as soon as Hroth shut the door of his cell."

Almost before Sigyn realized it, an icy rush of tears poured down her face. A huge, ugly, gulping sob wrenched out of her and Loki stiffened in dismay.

"Sigyn..." He took her hand in both of his.

She couldn't stop herself from weeping, and though she hated herself for it, her grief was not entirely for Breyrkekolf, nor even for Brisenndyr, though she ached for them both. They were her friends. She'd thought her tears for Loki and for herself had all been shed a long time ago, but it wasn't true. _Not again. Not again, not again..._

"Sigyn, what can I do?" Loki said. "Please, tell me what to do."

She'd never heard him sound so helpless; she scrubbed her free hand over her wet face, though her tears were still falling swiftly. Her throat and her chest hurt. There was nothing he could do. Absolutely nothing. Such a tempest of anguish and tenderness in his expression, but as their eyes met, she saw horror surface there as well. She shook her head. _It isn't your fault; it isn't._ She couldn't speak the words. Even though she loved him, this was his fault. All of it. Entirely.

Loki bent his head and laid it in her lap. One of his hands stayed clasped in hers; the other slipped into the bend of her knee, cupping her calf. And oddly, that calmed her. The warm weight of him leaning against her legs, and the soft tick-tick of snow at the windows, made her feel less as though her insides were crusted in ice. Isefrid's bed chamber seemed to Sigyn white and empty as the Vastlands. She could not hear the Casket any better now than her faint imaginings from before she had touched it. But, her tears slowed and, after a few minutes, they ceased to fall.

She reached out and caressed Loki's hair, skimming its heavy sleekness between her fingers, then tracing her fingertip along the curve of his horn, from his temple, back toward his ear. Loki remained where he was, silent, his shoulders rising slightly with each breath.

She said, "The Casket didn't kill me, because it was protecting our child."

Underneath her hands, he tensed. Lifting his head, he looked up into her face. She'd expected surprise, joy, probably alarm -- but not narrow-eyed, tight-lipped resolve. She nearly missed the smoky-frost smell of him gathering his magic.

Loki caught her wrist and held her tight, as he rose to his feet.

"No," she said. "No, don't --"

Too late. She had neither the skill, nor the speed to defend herself. He put a finger to her lips. His magic enfolded her, stealing her will and her voice. He hadn't been strong enough to stop her before, but he certainly was now.

Taking hold of her by the shoulders, he pushed her gently back onto Isefrid's white bed. He positioned her arms and legs, to make her more comfortable. As if he were arranging her corpse.

She'd done exactly the same thing to him, as she'd walked across the great hall to touch the Casket, but that didn't stop her from being furious about it.

He bent over her; a kiss brushed her forehead and, though they were alone in the Queen's Chamber, his voice was low when he told her, "I can't let you challenge Kolvaldr." He touched her cheek. "I hope you can forgive me."

She forgave him. Of course she did. Even though she was still angry with him.

When he stood up once more, he had cloaked himself in an illusion of her. Instead of the SHIELD tunic and the fatigue trousers, Sigyn's stolen shape wore a gauzy, deep green gown that bared her arms, and a good deal of cleavage. The ridiculous garment was suspended precariously at each shoulder by a small gold pin in the shape of a dagger. Gold bracelets encircled her arms, and a heavy gold necklace set with emeralds sparkled around her throat. Traces of gold shimmered on her eyelids and on her lips.

He unfurled one of the white furs from the bed, and spread it over her. Her face wore an expression entirely Loki. It promised nothing but trouble. And he was _cheating_. He wouldn't see it that way. He would point out to her that Kolvaldr had cheated first.

He left the bedside. The green gown went whispering and slithering across the fur-covered floor, and then the door closed with a soft click. She was alone.

Entirely alone. Loki had shielded the mental link between them. No longer could she feel the odd but comfortable sensation of him at the edge of her mind, as if he stood just at her shoulder. She missed it. But, she didn't blame Loki for that. Kolvaldr had turned Loki's bond with her into a weapon.

 _If only you hadn't told him about the child..._ she thought.

But no. That wasn't true. Loki never would have let her meet Kolvaldr in combat, even if he hadn't discovered her on the floor of the great hall, and it wasn't as though she could have concealed the challenge from him.

Sigyn lay in the dimness of Isefrid's bedchamber, gazing up at the domed ceiling above her head. It shimmered faintly, the pale gray stone swirled with veins of mica.

Left alone in here in here long enough, Sigyn realized she would probably fall asleep; she was warm at long last, under the white fur, and her muscles ached with fatigue, as if she'd run a very long distance. She didn't welcome sleep. She knew she would dream of Breyrkekolf. Of the wise and clever words she wished she'd said to him, to stop him. What words those might be, she didn't know. She'd spoken them so easily in her dreams after Loki's death, and she'd forgotten them the instant she awoke.

The light falling through the windows was already dimming, the shadows lengthening across the ceiling. Though the sconces on the walls burned brightly, the glow didn't reach far beyond its source. Now that the bed chamber was dimmer, Sigyn realized Loki had warded it. His spells shimmered like green fires against the walls. They were new, and strong. And quite specific.

Sigyn understood much more of magic than she could wield, and her heart began to flutter in her chest like a trapped bird. Loki had cast these wards to imprison Isefrid's ghost inside the Queen's Chambers. Isefrid had appeared to Sigyn twice, and then never again. He had cast the wards after Isefrid's second appearance. Sigyn was positive. When she'd asked him why Isefrid no longer walked, he had dismissed her concern. Casually. Without meeting her eyes.

And he'd carried her to the Queen's Chambers, laid her on this white bed, so contemptuously certain Isefrid would not appear again, because Sigyn had at last touched the Casket of Ancient Winters.

He'd brought her here, he said, because the Queen's Chambers were her chambers. Because she needed rest and quiet. That was not _precisely_ a lie, but Sigyn knew now that he'd brought her here to hide her. He could not conceal her in his own chambers. Someone might discover her there. Yutta, coming in to tidy up his discarded clothes and his abandoned teacups.

Aside from Hroth and possibly Svardir, had anyone seen Loki carry her to the Queen's Chamber? Had he veiled them? Spirited her through the hallways unseen? Was there even now an illusion of Loki in the great hall, trapped within a column of flame?

Loki might have planned this from the first moment he found himself free. Hroth might well have told him that she had challenged Kolvaldr. But, Loki could not fight Kolvaldr in her stead. His magic was as obviously _his_ as the sound of his voice, or the set of his shoulders. Anyone on his royal council would know it the instant they saw it. Kolvaldr would know it. And if Loki fought as she would fight, with her feeble command of spells, Kolvaldr would kill him.

She saw him. Saw the snow spreading red underneath him. Snow falling on his face, on his eyelashes, on his open eyes. The image in her mind was appallingly vivid. And then she saw herself, lying on the white bed, in the falling darkness.

No one would seek her in the Queen's Chamber. No one came here.

Sigyn drew a sharp breath. These awful thoughts were not hers. They belonged to this room. They were Isefrid. She had to free herself, and help Loki. Somehow.

The wards drew Loki's power. Not a lot. Only a little. Not much more the fragment of darkness Sigyn had freed from the Casket. But, Loki was also holding her prisoner, shielding his mind against hers, clothing himself in an illusion of her, and only he knew what else.

All his plots, and his tricks, and his illusions...

Perhaps, if she concentrated.

Focused on something small.

The little finger of her right hand. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and released it, slowly. Concentrated on moving just her finger the smallest bit.

Even though Loki had covered her with one of the furs, the Queen's Chamber was cold. Colder than it had been. She was positive. Heavy dread gathered around her, as the daylight waned.

Her finger twitched. She fought to move her hand. She could not. She took another deep breath. Loki himself had taught her to sink down inside of herself, to shut out everything except the rhythm of her breathing.

But, what came to her mind was the memory of a magpie trapped between her hands, wings trembling. Loki had taught her to conjure birds. To scoop up a handful of pebbles and dirt, toss them into the air and transform them. It had taken her weeks of frustrating failure, before she could conjure even blurry, winged shadows. But, she'd learned. He'd been as patient as her harp master. More patient than she'd ever known him to be, about anything else. Each one of her small triumphs had made him smile. He'd taught her how to light a candle, how to hold a book suspended in midair. He'd made her happy. She'd imagined them married, imagined their dark-haired, dark-eyed children. Imagined years with him. Imagined forever.

Her hand jerked across the bed. The spell holding her prisoner splintered and fell away. Tossing back the fur, she scrambled off the bed, her body numb and tingling. As her feet hit the floor, she staggered, but this time, her legs didn't crumple underneath her.

The yellow eye of Jotunjaldr glared through the windows above the bed, brilliant in the unnatural gloom, as she crossed the white carpeting. Her boots gritted in splinters of glass from the pitcher Loki had smashed. She set her hands against the doors leading to the outer chamber.

They felt icy, and heavy as two gigantic slabs of stone. As she pushed them open, a gust of icy wind swirled in to meet her. Sigyn gasped in surprise, as sharp flecks of ice stung her skin, and sudden, crushing despair enfolded her. _Isefrid._

The room was freezing because the huge windows set along the outer wall were open to the night air. They commanded a vista of jagged peaks in the distance, and the broad plains of the Vastlands beyond. Nearer to the palace, the terrain plunged into a ragged chasm, lined with sharp-edged boulders, and broken blocks of stone sheared from the palace wall, when Loki had opened the Bifrost into Jotunheim. Blue-white ice glazed the bottom of the pit.

What was she doing here? She did not belong in Jotunheim. Nor in Hjallsmuli. Not anymore. She looked at her hand, braced on the edge of the window frame for balance. At the traceries of blue the Casket had marked upon her. She was no longer Vanir, but she wasn't jotun either. She let her gaze travel downward, to the crevasse outside the window. Somehow, without her quite realizing it, she had climbed onto the narrow ledge. The toes of her Midgardian soldier's boots hung over the lip of stone.

In the back of her mind, a faint voice cried out. This wasn't what she wanted. This wasn't her.

Sigyn leaned out, over the chasm, mesmerized by the dizzying depth. There would be no pain, surely. Or very little. The fall was long enough, and the chasm deep enough, that the landing would kill her quickly. But, Loki had left her here. _Abandoned_ her in this haunted chamber, with the ghost he had trapped her. Had he ever loved her? Or had he only loved that _she_ loved _him_?

A hand pressed against her back. A large, cold hand that spanned her from shoulder to shoulder. Fingers curled around the back of her skull. Not tightly. They hadn't quite enough strength for that. Not yet.

Different hands seized her. Smaller hands, and strong. They grabbed fistfuls of her tunic and yanked her back. Sigyn lost her balance on the window ledge. Landing hard on the floor cleared her head like a slap across the face.

Yutta stared at her, wide-eyed. "I…I came to refill the lamps."

The ettin girl had spilled her reed basket near the window. Balls of blue lichen gleamed softly on the furry carpet, illuminating them both. Yutta's gaze shifted from Sigyn to something behind Sigyn. Her face filled with terror.

Sigyn didn't want to know. One of the outer doors stood ajar. She could see the hallway beyond. She scrambled to her feet, and grabbed Yutta by the arm. Scooping up the overturned basket, she dashed for the open door, bowling the basket underhand low to the floor, and sending a spell with it, a true-aim cantrip she had taught herself. After Loki had left her. After he had broken her heart.

 _Stop it,_ she told the voice. _No more._

The door slammed shut before she and Yutta could reach it, but it couldn't shut completely. The basket held it wedged open. Sigyn shoved Yutta into the hall, and then slithered through the narrow gap. The door banged again behind her, harder, nipping the back of her tunic, and crushing the basket into splinters. Sigyn yanked free, lunged across the corridor, and pressed herself against the stone wall on the far side. Her heart pounded high in her throat. Before today, she had never fainted in her life. Now was not a good time for her to faint again. She had to face Kolvaldr, _herself,_ in the circle of combat. Wherever that might be.

"My lady --" Yutta stammered. "Y-Your Majesty…"

Something struck the doors with a loud crash. They rumbled and rattled furiously, as if an enraged grimulf were trapped inside. Yutta clutched Sigyn with panicky tightness. But, they could not be discovered here. There could not be two of Sigyn wandering the halls of the palace.

"Yutta, come with me quickly," she said.

Past the Queen's Chambers, the rooms were empty. The corridor was dim. Sigyn ducked into a side passageway, pulling Yutta with her. Booming crashes echoed down the corridor one after the other, like an immense heartbeat. Sigyn took hold of Yutta gently by the arms.

"Yutta. Listen to me."

Yutta's eyes were wild and frightened, but she nodded.

"You cannot say you have seen me here. You must keep my presence a secret."

"Yes, majesty."

"You know I have challenged Kolvaldr Kolfgnarson."

"All of Jotunheim knows it, Majesty."

"His Majesty has taken my place. Taken my shape, do you understand?"

Yutta flicked a gaze back down the corridor. Amid the crashes and rumbles from the Queen's Chambers came running footfalls. Guards. Sigyn slipped her hand into Yutta's. They stole quickly down the corridor, past the last glowing wall sconce, into the shadows.

Yutta whispered, "You have magic as well, Majesty, do you not?"

"A little," Sigyn replied, frowning in confusion.

Then she realized what Yutta was thinking. She could cast illusions. She had nowhere near Loki's skill, but he had taught her transformation. Pebbles into birds. A skill upon which to build greater skills. After losing him, she'd lost the heart to teach herself much more. Instead of the self-pity she had felt in the Queen's Chambers, Sigyn was now only annoyed that she hadn't pursued her studies more diligently.

Really, there was only one shape she could cloak herself in.

"Will you keep watch?" she asked Yutta.

Yutta nodded eagerly, and crept a few steps back up the corridor. The noises from within the Queen's Chamber had ceased.

"Close the door." That voice was unmistakably Thistilbardi's. "Let no one enter." There was a short silence, and Thistilbardi added, "Do as I say."

The doors of the chamber clicked shut. They rattled, and then a slithering hiss brushed across the stone, and sent a chill skating down Sigyn's back.

One of the ettin growled, "What is this?"

Thistilbardi replied, "Laufey's consort does not rest easy, I fear."

Sigyn closed her eyes, and tried her best to concentrate, to bring about that slow turning-inside-out feeling of summoning her magic. She built an image of Loki in her mind, picturing every small detail of his appearance, every marking on his skin, the precise shade of his eyes: dark garnet at the rims, flecks of gold at the centers, like banked embers.

 _No one will look that closely,_ Sigyn told herself sternly. _Loki's guards and his royal council do not gaze dreamily into his eyes._

She presumed they did not, anyway. Instead, she concentrated on recreating the clothing Loki had been wearing when she'd seen him last: his dark gray coat with the white and black banded fur around the collar.

Loki could conjure an illusion in a flash. He'd explained to her once that his illusions were little more than flash and shadow. But, to those who beheld them, they _suggested_ much more.

That sort of spellwork was beyond Sigyn's ability. She built her illusion slowly and carefully, stitching Loki's shape around her. When at last she was done, she walked quietly down the corridor to join Yutta. Hearing her footsteps, Yutta turned, and then she gasped.

"M-my lady?" she whispered, narrowing her eyes.

Sigyn nodded. "Do you know where the circle of challenge is?"

"Yes, I shall show you."

Yutta reached up to one of the wall sconces, and plucked the ball of blue lichen from it. Carrying it like a lantern, she led Sigyn back down the narrow side passageway. It twisted and forked, past intersections and open doors leading to empty rooms. The glowing ball fluttered between Yutta's fingers, throwing leaping shadows up the stone walls. They met no one. Sigyn quickly lost her sense of direction. Yutta led her up a flight of steps, cold air flowing down to meet them, as they ascended. The staircase opened onto a battlement, washed by of Jotunheim's moons.

Past what looked like a maze of stone obelisks, Sigyn saw countless torches burning in the darkness, and hundreds of jotunar gathered around a sunken pit cut into steep ground. Half of the arena had been destroyed, possibly by the Bifrost, perhaps in some earlier calamity. It was not very large; about as wide as the great hall. But, it did not need to be large. It needed only to hold two combatants. And she could see both of them. Kolvaldr, the more massive of the two shadows, cast a bolt of ice, and the smaller shadow sprang out of its path. Loki.

Yutta said, "Majesty. Come quickly."

Sigyn followed her along the battlement and down another staircase, cut for an ettin's stride, and clinging to the outer wall of the palace above the same dizzying drop where Sigyn had stood less than an hour ago, and contemplated jumping. She had looked no farther than the chasm. If torches had been burning then in the circle of challenge, she had not seen them. Isefrid had not allowed her to see.

Sigyn and Yutta reached the bottom of the staircase, and headed quickly through the forest of obelisks at its foot. Moonlight illuminated the towering stones, casting the writing on them into sharp relief. Monuments to Jotunheim's dead kings and queens.

They were close enough now to the circle of challenge that Sigyn realized the the jotunar gathered at the edges the stone ring were silent. True, they had not roared and cheered for Kolfjollmarr's defeat, but _Loki_ had defeated Kolfjollmarr. Loki had defeated three other challengers; watching him kill someone had lost its novelty.

Sigyn did not fight. She'd expected some excitement about that prospect. At the very least, some morbid glee from those who hated their king's alien consort. Possibly even some wagers. But, the jotunar were not like Asgardians. She could not see past the tall shoulders of the ettin, but something in the arena exploded in a crash of ice and stone.

Yutta turned back, her face a pale smudge among the shadows. "Majesty, what do you plan to do?"

"I don't know," Sigyn replied grimly. She strode past Yutta, and up to two ettin at the edge of the crowd, pitched her voice low, and snapped, "Out of my way."

The ettin spun around in surprise, and backed out of her way -- out of King Loki's way, colliding with others in the crowd, who likewise turned to look. A path opened immediately for her.

Only Gauthild stepped forward, to block her way. "Majesty, the rules of combat forbid --"

Brisenndyr appeared at Gauthild's side, clasped the ettin's arm and urged her out of the way. Gauthild held firm. Sigyn dared not look Brisenndyr in the eyes; she was afraid Brisenndyr would know instantly she was not Loki. Instead, she focused on Gauthild's face.

"You risk more than the life of your queen," said Gauthild.

"Gauthild," Sigyn replied. "Do not test me."

Gauthild hesitated a moment longer, then bowed her head, and stepped back.

Sigyn stepped into the circle of combat. Shards of ice littered the flat ground. Loki was down on one knee at the edge of the arena. He still wore her shape, and when he saw her disguised as him, a look of almost comical shock crossed his face. But, Sigyn couldn't laugh at it. When he gathered himself to his feet, she saw the effort it cost him. He looked nearly spent. What had been his plan? To bore Kolvaldr to death, by casting one small cantrip after another? Of all the ill-conceived, mad schemes --

"Your Majesty." Kolvaldr pressed a hand to his heart and bowed. "At long last. I'd begun to fear you had no stomach to watch your beloved perish at my hand."

Sigyn walked to meet him. She knew what she had to do now. Loki had given her the answer. A handful of pebbles, tossed into the air, and transformed into birds. He was the birds. And she was the handful of pebbles.

"I don't wish to see anyone die," she replied.

As Kolvaldr's mouth stretched into a scornful smirk, Sigyn dropped her illusion.

Kolvaldr recoiled in shock. A flurry of gasps and muttered curses ran through the crowd of jotunar.

"Son of Kolfgnar." She approached him, slowly, picking her way through the scattered shards of ice."If you kill me, Loki will strike you down. You know this. Your kinsmen will take revenge upon him, and his kinsmen upon yours, and there will be war. Again."

Kolvaldr did not reply. He stared at her with unnerving intensity, his eyes gleaming beneath his craggy brow.

"Please," she said. "Let it end here."

Leaning down, Kolvaldr stretched his huge hand toward her. She braced herself. The ettin swiped his calloused thumb down her face, as if wiping away a smudge. At first, she thought he had done so to make certain Sigyn was herself. But, he looked from his thumb to her.

"You have touched the Casket," he said. He sounded almost reverent.

Sigyn's hand flew to her cheek. Her skin felt no different. It had never occurred to her that the Casket had marked her face, as well as her hands. As she put a hand to her hair, something flared behind Kolvaldr's eyes.

"No," he said, a thread of sarcasm in his tone. "You haven't any horns."

"Perhaps I've yet to earn them."

Kolvaldr raised a brow. Then he straightened, his gaze flicking past her, to Loki.

"Now you will slay me, I suppose," he said, "as you've slain all the others who challenged your rule."

"Her Majesty is the one who challenged you, not I." Loki replied, sounding utterly bored by the topic.

Kolvaldr huffed, and glared down at her, then over her shoulder once more. Behind Sigyn, Loki's footsteps came crunching across the broken ice. He stopped by her side. She'd gotten the color of his coat wrong. It was not dark gray, but blue, with flecks of green in the weave. His face looked pale and strained; his hand found its place, at the curve of her hip. Kolvaldr narrowed his eyes.

Sigyn said, "I've no desire for your death, Kolvaldr Kolfgnarson."

Kolvaldr appeared to consider that, and Sigyn held her breath.

"Nor I for yours," he said, finally. "Your bravery is -- it is jotun."

Startled by the compliment, Sigyn replied, "Thank you."

The ettin lifted one hand in a shrug. "Sadly then, we are at an impasse, since I will never give my loyalty to your beloved Jotunslayer."

"Will you give it to me?"

Kolvaldr's eyes widened. Then he laughed. Once more, he placed a hand to his heart and then, to Sigyn's astonishment, he bent to one knee, and bowed his head to her.

"My little queen," he said. "I will."

The End

***


End file.
